“When you fight those feelings the way you do, your body explodes into doing dumb shit, because a fireball isn’t meant to be contained. Let the real you breathe so everyone else can witness it.”
“I can’t lose you and experience that pain, Cade. Not again,” I whispered.
“You won’t,” he promised. “You never did. I was always watching. I may have thought I let you go but I couldn’t. I won’t. Never, Ms. Hardy. You’re my future wife.”
I laughed with tears in my eyes. “Not until you propose.”
He hummed low, and then he slid his hands under my shirt to slip my shorts and panties off. “I can’t do that for a while. I need to grovel some more first.”
And then his mouth was on me. I sobbed out with need for him.
“Just so we’re clear,” I moaned, “I want a lot of groveling. Right now, I still hate you.”
He chuckled into my pussy. “And I still love the way you hate me, dollface.”
32
Epilogue
Cade
Three months later
Iknew she needed time, and so did I when I left.
If I could have changed the world’s damn clocks, I would have. I contemplated fucking with the daylight savings and time zones. Like it would have mattered.
Instead, I did what I could for us, or for her.
She deserved the world, and I’d thought it would be better for her if I wasn’t in it.
I claim to be good at the dark web, not knowing a woman’s mind.
I’d spend the rest of my life making it up to her. I knew afterward I should never have left.
There were still days I wondered if she was better off without me, if somehow I still put her in danger by being tied to her. Yet, I did know better than to leave again. Izzy Hardy would always be my weakness, the girl I couldn’t look away from or leave behind, even if I tried.
I had tried. Yet, in the month I was gone, I’d also checked on her every day. I’d hacked her text messages, listened to her voice mails repeatedly, watched the security cameras to see her face over and over again.
I knew what people meant when they said a person could die of a broken heart. Without her, I would have died, and I think she felt the same.
Every morning, I saw the way she looked at me—with a smile so wide on her face that I hoped the world would never be without it, I heard the way she moaned out that she loved me or hated me, dependent on the day.
Izzy was living.
Living her life to the fullest.
So, I intended to lock her down and make sure she would be mine, living exactly that way for the rest of her life, by buying a ruby the same color as the roses she nowwantedevery day.
We were at her parents’ celebrating her brother’s birthday just months after getting back together, and I knew I had to pull her father aside to discuss his daughter’s hand in marriage.
Instead, all the guys hovered around the grill while Izzy grabbed her niece and tossed her up in the air before disappearing inside with her mother and Delilah.
Mr. Hardy flipped some of the steaks and let his sons all glare at me as I stood there in a suit while they wore gym shorts and baseball caps that didn’t match their T-shirts at all.
“You like your steak rare or what?” Mr. Hardy asked. It was the first thing any of them had said to me since Izzy brought me home and announced, “Cade and I are together now. Get over or under it, but I’m not dealing with the bickering. He’s mine and I’m his. Take him or leave him.” Then she winked at me and ran off to play with her niece.
“Rare is fine,” I answered.