Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 50759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 254(@200wpm)___ 203(@250wpm)___ 169(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 254(@200wpm)___ 203(@250wpm)___ 169(@300wpm)
I shook my head, trying to shake the tears away.
“I fucked up,” Brody’s voice was flat. “I’ve never given—”
“Will you shut up?” I whispered against my tears.
Brody’s lips flattened as he stared at me, wincing as if he were waiting for me to lay into him.
I went up on my knees, holding the box tightly while I crawled into his lap. His arms instantly went around me. “This is without a doubt the most special gift anyone has ever given me,” I told him, a single tear trailing down my cheek.
Brody immediately wiped it away.
“Thank God. You gave me a heart attack, thinking I’d hurt you. I don’t ever want to hurt you again.” There was regret in his voice. An apology.
Though I could never forget our past, I’d stopped dwelling on it. I’d stopped blaming him for it long ago.
Apparently, he had yet to stop blaming himself.
“I told you, I don’t want you apologizing for the person you were before,” I told him.
“I told you, I’m going to atone for being the reason I lost years when you could’ve been mine.” He grabbed my hand and kissed it. “Gonna make it up to you for the rest of my life. If you’ll have me.”
I froze, unable to handle all the emotion, on this night of all nights. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’d like, very fucking much, for you to stay here. To make a home with you. Make a family with you. Make memories with you to erase every single bad one you have of me or this place. “
My whole world seemed to tilt. I hadn’t been a small-town, family kind of girl. All I’d thought of was escape. Making myself something to prove to those bullies that I was more than what they’d made me.
Except Brody was one of those bullies.
And he thought I was more than even I did. He considered me … his.
“You’re serious,” I whispered.
“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ serious.” He pulled me closer. “But I know that’s selfish. Know that you don’t want to stay. That you’ve got a whole—”
“I want to stay,” I blurted. I hadn’t even known I was making that decision until right now. Somewhere deep down I’d known that I couldn’t leave. That I didn’t want to. But now, here, in front of Brody, it had come to the surface.
He flinched as if I’d hit him, shock blanketing his face.
“As much as I want you to, you can’t stay just for me.” He said the words as if they physically pained him. “I don’t want you resenting me, staying when you want to be somewhere else. You’re only just designing again.”
I fell a little more in love with him just then, and I wondered if it would be like that for me too, like my mother and father had been. Falling more and more for each other every day.
I hoped so.
“I’m not staying just for you,” I told him honestly. “I’m staying because I have a mother I didn’t realize I wanted to be best friends with. Because I have a niece I want to watch grow up. Because I have a brother I want to get to know again. A sister-in-law I want to connect with. Making my jewelry in my father’s forge is part of the magic. Is what I have left of him. I don’t want to leave that. I’ve got a town I’ve fallen in love with.” My hand reached up to stroke his jaw. “And a man I simply can’t live without,” I added in a whisper.
His eyes were molten, hands a brand on my hips.
“Well, if that’s the case.” He kissed me softly and slowly. “You know, we’ll have to get married.”
I leaned back and arched a brow, even though my heart was in my throat. “You’re telling me we’re getting married?” I asked in a sharp tone.
He chuckled. The sound warmed my insides. “I know better than to tell you anything. Figured you may be agreeable to that, though.”
I pursed my lips, tracing the lines of his face, illuminated by the lights of the tree, seeing ghosts of the boy he was before mixed with the man he was now. It was just then I realized without the boy he was before, he wouldn’t be the man he was now. And I realized I’d go through the years of torment all over again just to be standing in front of this man.
My man.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I’d be agreeable.”
Just like that.
A happily ever after.
Or something darn close to it.
And wouldn’t you know it, just like my mother ‘predicted,’ he was sitting at the dinner table on Christmas day.
And the next one after that.