He’s going to tell me not to be silly.
He didn’t say he loved me. He said he loathed me.
All of this has been a trick like I thought at the beginning.
But that’s just the remnant of the old Bria trying to invade the perfection of this moment.
Unlike before, that part of me is so much easier to beat back now, to hammer my fists in and tell her to get lost.
“I love you too.” Gripping onto his firm sides, I pull myself closer to him, my breasts pressing flat against him as I stare up with passion blazing through me. “I’m so freaking glad you said it, Braden. I’m so freaking glad you feel the same. I love you so, so much.”
He leans down and suddenly our lips are fusing together, a tingling explosive pleasure shivering between us, dancing around our mouths and up and down our bodies. My nipples pebble and buzz, and I feel his manhood push firmly against my belly as our tongues go to war.
He growls through the kiss.
And I whimper, whimper to let him know to keep going, to kiss me in that special way of his – the way that causes every single piece of me to combust, to explode from the inside until I can’t take it anymore.
But he pulls back, wrapping his arms around me and holding me close.
“Wait.” He breathes raggedly. “If we keep going, I won’t be able to stop. I need to say something. I need to… ask you something.”
Hope lights up inside of me, tingling and alive, but I warn myself to be careful.
A house, love…
That’s more than I ever could’ve asked for.
“What?” I whisper.
“Bria, before I laid eyes on you, I truly thought there was something wrong with me. Something broken inside of me. Hell, maybe it was seeing my parents get shitfaced every day of their lives. Maybe it was just the way I was born. I don’t know. Whatever it was, I never thought just seeing someone could change me irrevocably.”
His voice gets deeper with emotion the more he talks, passion replacing gruffness, love replacing his usual ferocity.
“But that’s what you did to me. I looked at you and everything changed, right then, in a single moment. I know how that would sound to most people. But the more time I spend with you, Bria, my perfect Bria… the more I realize we are nothing like everyone else. What we have, it’s ours. Ours alone. I love you. And that’s why I bought this home for us, so we have a place to raise our family. And so…”
He trails off as he takes a step back, laughing and shaking his head slowly.
“What?” I say, pushing the word past the sobs crackling through me. “What’s so funny?”
“I’ve just never been this nervous before. Not once in my life. Not for an audition. Not even when I left home. Never.”
“You don’t need to be nervous,” I tell him, pawing at the tears sliding endlessly down my cheeks, anticipation rising in me like a song.
“How do you know?” He grins. “You don’t know what I’m going to ask yet.”
“Try me.”
“Do you have any idea how sassy you sounded then? I love it so much, how you’ve come out of your shell, how you’ve let the more confident parts of your personality shine.”
“I haven’t let them,” I whisper. “You’ve brought them out in me.”
“And that’s just one of the reasons we make such a great team,” he says, reaching into his inside jacket pocket. “One of the thousand reasons we’re built for each other. You draw me out of my grumpiness and I draw you out of your shyness. I can’t believe I ever thought I even had a chance of resisting you.”
He lowers himself to one knee as he pulls out the ring box, prompting another wave of sobs to burst out of my chest. My skin is tingling as though the sun is targeting me for special attention.
But it’s not the sun.
It’s our love, our bright warm love.
He opens the ring box as he stares up at me, that starry smile on his face, that impossible tempting just-mine smile.
“Bria Tanner,” he says, voice deep and husky with emotion. “Make me the happiest man alive. Make me the luckiest man alive and be my wife. Bria… my sweet Bria. Will you marry me?”
He opens the ring box to reveal a chunky diamond that glitters in the light, winking up at me, set within a white gold band. For long seconds I just stare at the ring, struggling to believe it’s for me, the same way it’s difficult to believe the house is for me, for us… the same way it’s difficult to accept the full flourishing of our future.
But I’m done being the girl who doesn’t think she deserves anything. I’m done letting those anxious instincts rule me.