“What?” I squinted at him. Was he kidding?
He combed a hand through his dark hair and I saw the crazy sort of love a man has in his eyes right before he walks off the edge of sane to fall over the cliff into insanity. He didn’t know it yet, but he was about to find that the woman he was going after already owned him. “I need to get somewhere quick. So, you’re loaning it to me. Or I’m beating your ass for hooking up with my sister.”
“You think I can’t take you?” I challenged.
Of course, Dom stepped up to his brother’s side. “You really want Izzy coming outside to see us all wrestling?”
I guess I couldn’t kill her brothers. “Fine. You can have the jet for a day.”
“I’ll take the jet for as long as I need it. And, Cade, you hurt her, and I don’t care who you are, I’ll kill you.” Declan stared me down, no fear in his eyes at all.
“You seem to think I wouldn’t kill myself for that very reason? If I’ve hurt her, I’m already dead inside, you get me?”
His jaw worked up and down, up and down. “I got you.”
Izzy bounced out of the house with her niece on her hip. “Are you guys coming to eat? We’re hungry!” She snuggled into the little girl’s face. “Aren’t we?”
Them giggling together as we walked back inside had me murmuring next to her, “Careful. You’ll make me want something I never thought I would.”
She narrowed her eyes like she didn’t understand.
Later that night, when we got home, she would finally get it.
“Cade.” She came out of the bathroom in just a towel, wringing her hair with another one as she studied me. “Have you seen my birth control?”
“I have,” I admitted, looking over an email from the Pentagon.
“Can you tell me where?” she asked in a condescending tone.
I pushed my glasses up on my nose but didn’t look up as I said, “I saw them in the toilet right before I flushed them.”
“You what?” she screeched. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong is you made me want to have a baby at your family’s. So we’re having one.”
“I’m not having a freaking baby with you.” She waited a beat. “Are you insane? Stop working and look at me.”
I set my laptop to the side of the bed and gave her my full attention. “I’m not insane, dollface. I’m in love. So fucking in love with you that I want to make copies of you mixed with me and see if we can duplicate our coding in a way that doesn’t have as many problems as we do.”
“We’re not even married. And we’ve been together for not even—”
“For long enough.” I got out of the bed to walk up to her and pull her hips close to mine. She whimpered at my hard cock against her stomach. “Want me to fuck you bare to remind you how good it’ll feel every time I try to fill you up with my baby?”
“Jesus, Cade.” Her hazel eyes squeezed shut before she stepped back and said, “I need to show you something.”
Right then, after I’d told her I wanted her to have my babies? She wanted to show me something?
She hurried out of the room and I readjusted my pants. The woman was going to make me work for this proposal, I guess.
When she returned, she had a piece of paper in her hand. “Remember when you told me to rewrite Vincent’s letter?”
I cracked my knuckles and tried not to imagine Izzy broken, how he’d done that, how a man I’d never met took advantage of her love and then left her in ruin to pick up the pieces.
It hadn’t been my place to pass judgment on him but I still felt the anger for her then as much as I did now. “I remember and I remember thinking a few choice things about him too.”
She scoffed. “You’d think that about anyone who slept with me.”
“Damn right I would.” I pulled her close so I could at least hold her while she confessed whatever she was about to, my hand rubbing her back and trying to provide what support I could now for a tragedy she’d experienced on her own before.
“So, anyway, I didn’t rewrite it like you said, because he solidified his own fate.” She shrugged and took a deep breath. It was still something she’d always struggle with, but I’d be there to support her through it now. “But I wrote back to him because you made me strong enough to do so.”
When she held out the letter in front of my face, I stared at it. “You want me to read it?”
She shook the paper in front of me. “Why else would I be holding it out to you?”
I searched her face fast, not sure if this was a lapse in judgment of hers. If she thought I’d be happy about her professing her love for her dead boyfriend, she’d be mistaken.
Fuck. I wasn’t sure I wanted to read it all. Suddenly, my palms sweat like I wouldn’t be able to handle if she did love him.
What if she loved him more than me? I mean, he was gone, but could I live with that?
I’d have to. I still wouldn’t let her go for shit. With a lot more fear slithering through my veins about my proposal now, I snatched the letter from her hands.
Line 1: I won’t say this is a love letter, because it’s not.
Line 2: But if I were to have written one, it wouldn’t have been about you.
Line 3: You left me, and you promised you wouldn’t.
Line 4: You promised to love me forever. But you didn’t.
Line 5: Don’t ask me if you were weak or strong.
Line 6: Even though I’ve moved on, I still don’t know what’s right or wrong.
Line 7: I do know you lost so much good when you threw away the bad.
Line 8: I do know I’m older, smarter, and know you could have had a better life than you had.
Line 9: I wish you could have seen how to fight.
Line 10: That someone gave you the strength and love to see the light.
Line 11: Can you see that I found a love that wrecks me but still makes me whole?
Line 12: I feel the pain, the wreckage but also the love deep in my soul.
Line 12: So, I won’t thank you for what you did but I’ll thank you for leaving me.
Line 13: It led me to him and to see I could be the person I wanted to be.
Line 14: I’m sorry you got lost in your mess.
Line 15: But thank you for showing me I should never let go.
“Jesus,” I murmured and let out the long breath I’d been holding.
She loved me. And it wrecked me and put me back together too. I felt it while reading that letter, how my stomach twisted at thinking she may love him, how it uncoiled when I realized she didn’t, and how it felt like electricity zinging through my system when it read like she was ready to be with me forever.
“What?” she asked quietly, like she was suddenly embarrassed.
“I’m ashamed to say I was fucking nervous you were still going to love him more than me in this damn letter.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” She guffawed and tried to grab the note from me.
I recoiled quickly enough that she couldn’t reach it though. Then, I placed my other palm on her face gently. “It’s beautiful, Izzy. Painful and raw too. It’s you. Someone he didn’t deserve and I don’t deserve either.”