“Right. We didn’t define it at the time, but it definitely needs to be defined.” He paused before sighing deeply. “I’ve never made it a secret how I feel about you. You’re my heart. I want to explore everything there is to explore with and about you. I want to be your man, . . . but I need you to want me to be your man. When we made this pact, we were kids in our earlytwenties. Even though I’ve been teasing you about it for years, I’m not expecting you to keep the pact if you don’t want me as your man.”
“I think we should skip straight to marriage,” I told him.
His jaw dropped, and his eyes widened simultaneously. His eyebrows immediately furrowed. I reached out and massaged the space between them on his forehead, to get him to relax them.
“What?” he questioned.
“What, what? We know each other inside and out, Jay. We love each other. We’ve dated each other. I mean, you’ve taken me on trips, bought me gifts, flown me here, there, and everywhere. What else is there for us to do except get married? I mean, if you wanna be my man, and want me to be your girl—how much more you being my man, and me being your girl is there than marriage?”
“Your mouth is so fucking reckless, Skyy. Do you hear yourself? Do you get what you’re saying to me? If we get married, you get that you’ll belong to me, right? I’m not having no marriage of convenience with you.”
“I get it.”
“Do you? Because in all these years, you’ve never wanted to belong to me. Now all of a sudden, you want to belong to me? What’s going on? You got an incurable disease? What’s going on?”
“First of all, it was never that I didn’t want to belong to you. I couldn’t belong to you, Jay. I don’t want to say you were careless, but you were too . . . carefree. Nothing anybody, any female ever did looked like it was crossing the line to you. Everything those bitches did looked like they were crossing the line to me. We were coming from two different places, and it would’ve broken us up. You would have thought I was overreacting. I would’vegotten resentful because I would’ve felt like you were blowing my feelings off. It wasn’t worth it.”
“And you think it’ll be different now?”
“I know it’ll be different now. You’re different now.”
“Nopapermarriage. A real marriage.”
I grinned at him. “A real marriage.”
“You move in . . . here. You change your name to either Skyy McKissick or Skyy House-McKissick. You wear your ring. You give my mother the grandkids she’s been hounding me about. You sit in the stands with the other wives. Right?”
“Right.” My eyes went soft, and my heart started to thump in my chest. I understood that Jaxxon was about to place his heart in my hands, and he was going to trust me with taking care of it. I scooted into his lap and wrapped him up in a hug. “I’ll do all the things, Jay. Skyy House-McKissick, Home of Jaxxon McKissick.”
“Fucking facts. Home of Jaxxon McKissick.” He kissed my lips, then pushed his tongue into my mouth.
I kissed him back, rubbing my hands over the soft hair of his close-cropped fade.
It wasn’t our first time sharing a kiss. We’d shared kisses in the past. We’d tried to take our relationship from platonic to intimate in the past, but the women were always there, . . . always on the periphery. And Jaxxon didn’t have the proper boundaries. He never wanted to hurt their feelings. A part of me felt like he wasn’t willing to hurt their feelings, so mine were sacrificed instead. That taught me quick to keep my feelings to myself. Anyway, we’d both grown up. We’d chosen each other.
We broke the kiss.
“Till the wheels fall off,” he whispered, a smile on his face that lit up his chocolate brown eyes.
Whew. This man was fine as hell, sweet as hell, and all mine.
As promised, Jaxxon and I went to dinner. We left the restaurant and went to the baseball stadium on the north side of the city, with the mascot that looked like a cute baby bear. It was the smaller stadium of the two baseball stadiums in Chicago, but the fans were dedicated and rowdy.
The Coyotes bought out a luxury suite. By the time Jaxxon, his security, Hezekiah (Hez), and I arrived, several people from the team were already there. I knew all the players who were represented byEngineered Excellence, so I went around the room giving hugs and greeting people, with Jaxxon attached to my hand. He took a lot of teasing from the guys who knew me, especially from my personal players. They fake-threatened him about treating me well and being good to me.
We ended up right beside Travis and Kelcie.
“Did you two talk?” she asked close to my ear, so neither her husband nor my future husband would hear her.
“We did.”
“And you’re holding up the agreement?”
I chuckled. “Oh, I’m definitely holding up the agreement. We’re getting married.”
“What?” Her shriek caused every person in our vicinity to look our way.
Kelcie wasn’t the most popular WAG (wife and/or girlfriend) on the team, so her outburst also earned us some dirty stares.
