Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
That I couldn’t drag my kids into this.
Couldn’t drag Tessa into this.
I didn’t deserve a single one of them in my life.
Not with what I’d done.
I might have tried to change, but it didn’t change anything. The damage was done.
Jud quirked a brow.
“Nowhere? This fucker’s been salivating over Tessa since the second she came into the club. You didn’t think we missed that shit, did you, brother?” He chuckled as he took a swig of his beer.
Unease stretched across my chest, and I forced myself to return his smile.
Because that shit had gotten deep.
Taken a direction it wasn’t supposed to go.
“Guess you got me,” I mumbled.
“Okay, okay, the whole salivating over our sweet Tessa thing was clear. But this whole wedding bit comes as a surprise,” Logan argued.
Trent grunted at his youngest brother. “Says the guy who proposed to Aster three weeks after she came back into his life.”
Logan shifted to gaze at Aster, who was laughing where she sat at the table with all their wives.
Tessa had her head leaned against Logan’s wife’s shoulder, mumbling something that I’d really like to hear.
My dick twitched.
She was all the way across the yard and still the sight of her had lust knotting in my guts.
Logan swiveled back to Trent. “I’ve loved that woman since I was eighteen. I would say that proposal was about a decade delayed. Not that you didn’t get yourself pussy whipped the second Eden came into your club.”
Another grunt from Trent. “Not complainin’.”
Jud gazed at his wife, his dark eyes devoted as he watched her nurse their son. “I’d have to say not one of us has a thing to be complaining about.”
He put his beer out in the middle of the circle we’d made. Logan and Trent were quick to clink their glasses against it.
Warily, I clinked mine, too.
“To four lucky assholes.” Jud chuckled.
“Here, here,” Trent agreed.
My spirit rumbled.
Thunder that vibrated through my being. One that warned a storm was coming.
The clinking of glass suddenly pulled me out of the stupor, and my mother was over by the cake that was set up on a round table near the buffet. “I have something I’d like to say.”
That had guilt constricting, too.
My mother’s joy too potent.
Too profound.
And I’d been the fool who’d insisted we needed to keep her in the dark.
Tessa popped up from her chair, and she whirled around. That gorgeous face lifted in this smile when she caught my eye. It nearly dropped me to my knees.
Like the sight of me made her feel like she was soaring.
She stretched out her hand toward me. She wore another red dress because she had this thing about driving me out of my mind. This one was flowy and swishing around her knees. Tonight, her freckles seemed to glow beneath the twinkle lights strung up over her head.
I gulped.
Sweet fuckin’ temptation.
In an instant, my body was a tangle of want.
Problem was that need refused to remain skin deep. It was something that had seeped and infiltrated, penetrating all the way down to the bone, getting way too close to the darkened depths where no one else could go.
Where her ghost lingered, and my soul stayed trapped.
Jud patted me on the back. “Looks like your girl is waiting on you.”
Right.
My girl.
I slowly edged across the lawn in her direction.
Energy snapped and fired, and fuck, what the hell was I doing?
Because our friends and family were clapping, shouts and cheers going up in the air, and my mother was looking at us like a long-dead dream had come to life.
My head tipped down, then I was breathing out a shattered sigh when Tessa wrapped her hand in mine.
She squeezed and canted me one of those looks that promised, We have this. We make a really great team.
But how could that be true when I was dragging her toward destruction?
Tessa led me up to where my mother stood, the girl barely touching me but wrapping me whole.
Mom cleared some of the roughness from her voice, her eyes bleary just from looking at us.
Our guests all settled down.
“I wanted to thank everyone for coming tonight on such short notice…but I think we can all agree that Milo and Tessa’s engagement took all of us a bit by surprise, can’t we?” my mother teased as she set her gaze upon us.
Her love poured out and flooded the space.
Hell, I felt it coming at us from all sides, laughter rolling across the lawn as our guests called out their agreement.
My heart jackhammered.
“Okay, okay, we can tease these two all we want…” Mom waved a hand like she wanted everyone to understand the seriousness of what she was speaking, and her voice deepened in emphasis. “But there’s something I’ve learned in my life. Love can come on fast or it can come on slow. It doesn’t matter. Not one kind is stronger than the other. It’s just born differently. And what I can say for sure is I’ve never felt a love so strong as the one that was born between Milo and Tessa.”