I hate myself. Why am I arguing with him and poking holes in his logic when this should be a dream come true?
It’s because it doesn’t feel real. Good things like this don’t happen to Bailey Jansen. Not with men like him.
“Stop thinking what you’re thinking. Stop pretending this isn’t real.” He bends slightly and lifts me, picking me up easily and carrying me back toward the house. “Stop telling me what I intend to do,” he whispers against my ear. “Because I do intend to marry you. And I want you to wear that fucking ring while I show you that it’s true.”
Then he kicks the door open. Marches me up the stairs to his room. Drops me to my feet at the foot of his bed, and says, “Strip.”
34
Beau
Bailey’s eyes have widened to unbelievable size, and her lips pop open as she stares back at me. Shocked? Confused? I’m not sure, but I can tell the events of tonight have thrown her for a loop.
“Was there a part of that order you didn’t understand, Bailey?”
I step closer to her, chin tipping down to keep my gaze fixed on hers. Her tongue darts out over her bottom lip and my eyes follow it hungrily.
“Okay. So, let me get this straight.”
I nod, biting down on a smirk. She’s having a hard time accepting this. In hindsight, I should have started this conversation differently.
“We’re not faking anymore.”
“That’s right.”
“Because we both want this?”
“It seems that way.” A deep chuckle rumbles in my chest as I watch her work it out in those coal-black eyes. A darkness I actually want to get lost in.
“How do we do this? Like, we just carry on? I … ” One of her hands grips her throat. “Beau, I have all these plans.”
I skim a hand up and down her rib cage. “We’ll work it out. We don’t have to have all the answers right this second.”
She nibbles at her lip. “I’m your real fiancée now?”
“Yes.”
She slowly nods her head, understanding flaring to life in her eyes. And then … something more playful?
Her head tilts, her arms cross, and her mouth takes on a teasing curve. “What if I told you I don’t want to be engaged to you?”
I drop my lips closer drawn in by the heat from her skin. We breathe each other’s breath. “Then I’d call you a fucking liar, sugar.”
I kiss her. I don’t give her a chance to run her smart mouth and test my patience with bratty jokes. I take her mouth to shut her up and to claim her.
Her hands fist my shirt and our tongues tangle as my fingers thread through the silky locks of her hair. This kiss feels different. Better. Less tentative and more desperate.
“You’re insane,” she mutters against my lips between kisses, and she’s probably not wrong. But I’m past caring about the way I’m perceived.
I pull back, dotting kisses over her cheeks. Over her nose.
And I confess my truth to her.
“I’ve been doing impulsive shit, hoping one of those things might make me feel something. And not a single one of them did. Until you. So if this thing with you makes me insane? I’ll be happy to wear that badge.”
When our eyes meet, all I see is longing and pride. No pity, no uncertainty. We both know this is right. It just felt too unlikely to say out loud.
“Do you really love me?”
Do I love her? God. What a pedestrian question, one that feels like it doesn’t encompass all the feelings I have for her. It doesn’t seem like enough. But I’ll keep telling her, keep showing her, until I figure out better words to describe the way I feel about her.
“Bailey Jansen, I love you,” I murmur as our faces dance close to one another, exchanging soft kisses. We’re in this kind of lull. Standing on a precipice, ready to topple over the edge.
“How do you know?”
I kiss just below her ear, reveling in the way she tilts her head. My lips move down to her neck. “I just do.” I kiss her shoulder, right beside the tied strap.
“I don’t think anyone has ever loved me.”
I freeze. The pain in my chest is sharp, instant, acute.
She says it like it’s a fact.
I’ve seen a lot of sad shit in my life, but none of it has wounded me the way that one sentence just did. I don’t know what to say. What is a person supposed to say to that? Are words enough?
It strikes me that they’re not.
A boy might stand here waiting for her to say it back, but I don’t need that validation. Bailey might not know what love is, but I do.