Bella glanced behind her, at the place where all the private rooms had their doors closed. She lowered her voice and her eyes sparkled. “Well, I do like enjoying myself. With you. And by enjoying, I mean boning.”
“Who says boning anymore?”
She shrugged. “I do, I guess. I enjoyed that. A lot actually. I just- I don’t do dating. Guys are dicks. It’s never worked out. It just hurts in the end. It’s always an epic fail. I thought I’d just be saving us a lot of time and pain.”
“Did that work out? I mean, have you enjoyed going back to being single? Or at least not seeing me on the weekends?”
“No,” she admitted gruffly. “I guess I haven’t enjoyed that at all.”
“There you have it.” Rhett latched on to anything he could. “I rest my case. It’s better with me. Admit it. Just because all the other bullshit came to an end, doesn’t mean this has to. It’s more than just sex. Because every single time I was with you, it fixed that for me, I mean, the whole blue balls thing, but it didn’t fix anything going on in my head or that tightness in my chest that never leaves. All those other endings do not mean this won’t work out if we both try. We can be real, Bella. We can give it a chance and see where it goes. Everything in life hurts, but sometimes it’s worth it.”
“That sounds like a motivational poster again.”
“I can’t help it. I’m floundering here.”
He froze when Bella slowly walked out from behind the desk. She walked around the counter and towards him and didn’t stop until she was right in front of him. She eyed him up, hard.
“Just so you know, if you fuck this up badly, I have some guys here who wouldn’t mind kicking your ass.”
Rhett grinned. God, it felt good to take a chance. To be there with her, to have her so so close. To inhale her sweet scent. To feel the heat of her body pressing into him when she stepped even closer, to feel the delicate bones of her hand in his when he dared to reach out and grasp it.
“I’ll try really hard not to give them a reason.”
“Rick even said that if you hurt me, he’d carve that panther out of your thigh.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah. I know. I work with some real psychos.”
“I definitely won’t give him a reason to do that.”
Bella hesitated. “Do you promise?” The look in her eyes, a quarter uncertainty, a quarter fear, and probably half of whatever the feeling was inside his chest that was turning him all achy and squishy and soft, turned him even achier and squishier and softer.
“I promise.” There wasn’t anything else he could say. The rest they would just have to figure out as it came.
He wasn’t going to bail. He might have found Bella in the strangest most inopportune time, but maybe it was the strangest rightest time. He didn’t give a shit if rightest wasn’t a word. It described what he felt for Bella perfectly, so he was sticking with it.
When he bent his head and kissed her breathless, that was also the rightest thing he’d ever done in his life. He was definitely sticking with it just like he was sticking with her. And all the grammar experts and dictionary writers and the language police could just suck it.
And then Bella kissed him back, right there in the middle of the tattoo shop’s waiting area, and hell, he forgot all about language and made up words and everything else. Everything but her. It was always going to be her. It always was. He’d finally, finally figured it out.
EPILOGUE
Bella
The best thing about giving love a shot?
All of it.
One year. One whole year. One year she and Rhett had officially been together. They hadn’t killed each other. They hadn’t wound up hating each other. It was chaos, but it was the good kind. The kind that makes you fall more and more in love. Over and over again, with each passing day.
Bella would have never said she’d enjoy being in a relationship before. But surprisingly, she did enjoy calling herself Rhett’s girlfriend.
She never thought she’d enjoy calling herself his fiancée either, but the ring on her finger made her smile every single time she opened her eyes. It had been eight days and she still wasn’t used to it.
“You are looking at that thing again?” Rhett rolled over in bed beside her. He propped himself up on his elbow and stared down into her eyes. His sparkled. Even first thing in the morning, sheet creases across his face, sleep in the corners of his eyes, and dragon breath, he was still smoking hot. And cute. And adorable. And incredibly sexy.
“Yeah,” she admitted. “It’s so big it’s like a movie projector in here.” She pointed to the rainbows and light rays dancing across the white wall by their bed.