He reaches up to pull me down so my lips are inches from his. “I love you, too. Thank you for being you. For being so different from all the mistakes of my past.”
And then there are no more words as his lips meet mine.
CHAPTER 25
“You can expect the results in seven to ten business days,” the tech tells Luke as he places a bandage over a small cotton ball on his arm.
“Any way we can speed that up?” Luke asks.
The tech gives Luke a tight smile. “Not really but you can still try if you’re offering to grease my palm.”
Luke chuckles. “Understood. Thanks.”
We leave the lab, and I let Michelle take the front seat next to Luke since she almost passed out again and claims the backseat makes her carsick.
“I was hoping we’d have the results before I have to leave for Denver,” Luke says on our way home. It was a long shot anyway since he leaves in three days.
“Guess we won’t,” Michelle says, and I sense more than a little bit of smugness in her tone.
Whatever. I roll my eyes behind my sunglasses. She can be smug all she wants. She’s the one who forced her way into our home. She’s the one sleeping alone in Luke’s house while Luke keeps me warm at night.
We’re quiet the rest of the way home, each of us lost in our own thoughts, and it’s not until after dinner when Michelle heads out with some friends that I find out what he was thinking.
We’re sitting on the couch, Pepper in between with her butt against my leg—of course—and her head perched on Luke’s leg. He scratches her absently behind the ears and I’m petting a pattern on her back when he glances at me. “Can I talk to you about something?”
My eyes lock on his. “Always.”
“This whole mess with Michelle just has me thinking a lot about what I want out of life. You know?” He scratches a trail from Pepper’s head down to my hand, where he links his fingers through mine. “Do you want kids?” he asks.
I nod. “Yeah. Someday. Ideally a few years down the road, and I’d love a boy and a girl, sort of like Josh and me. I want them to be close like we are. What about you?”
“I never thought I did, mostly because I didn’t want multiple kids who would grow up to turn on each other. But regardless of what happens with the paternity test results, yeah, I do, too. Kids will eventually grow into adults who can make their own decisions. It’s the parents’ job to give their kids the tools to foster healthy relationships with their siblings.”
“How many do you want?” I ask.
“Two sounds good,” he says. His fingers tighten in mine, and my eyes fall to where our hands are connected. “Especially if they’re with you.”
I glance up at him, and he gives me a small smile. I lower my voice just in case Michelle is around to overhear. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I want this,” he says, using his other hand to wave between the two of us, “to be real. I don’t want some stupid contract laying out our future. I don’t want either of us to hold any anxiety about what happens when the term is up. In fact...” He trails off and stands, and he leaves the room. He returns a minute later with some papers in his hand, and then he ceremoniously rips them in half.
It’s just figurative since I still have my signed copy, but the sentiment is there, and tears spring to my eyes.
“It’s you and me, Ellie. I might be a different person during the season, and I want you to just hold out for the me you know. He’ll be back, and we’ll have our life back in a couple months, and we’ll be stronger for it.” My mind immediately moves to overdrive. What does he mean that he might be a different person? How, exactly?
I don’t get a chance to ask because he keeps talking.
“I just want all this nonsense,” he says, shaking our contract, “to be off the table. This Michelle business is making me see how very much I want kids someday. A family. With you.”
He sits back down, but this time beside me instead of on the other side of Pepper. He’s close, and he murmurs softly when he speaks again.
“I never thought I’d get married again,” he says. “I never thought I’d have kids. And then you tumbled into my life at a damn nightclub of all places and somehow you brought me everything I didn’t know I was missing. Be my wife, Ellie. For real.” He drops a kiss just below my ear on my neck, and I shiver at the feeling.
“You and me,” I murmur, and his lips trail over to my mouth.
He kisses me briefly—way too briefly—before he pulls back. “Is that a yes?”
“Oh, hell yes, that’s a yes,” I say, and then he pushes me back. Pepper jumps off the couch at my sudden movement, but I hardly notice because Luke’s mouth is hot on mine, his tongue assaulting mine in the most heavenly way as an ache presses ferociously between my legs.
“Fuck me,” I murmur. “Right here. Right now.”
He answers by shifting up off me to unbuckle his belt. He fumbles with my jeans before he shoves them down, and I kick off one leg so I have enough room to spread my legs for his lean body. And then he shoves into me without foreplay, and holy hell. My eyes roll back into my head at the perfect feeling of his entrance. He rocks into me right there on the couch, and there’s something so simple about having sex with my husband on our couch even though there are so many other complications clouding our relationship.
But those complications don’t matter.
We’re sealing our new commitment. It’s a new promise. It’s pure and beautiful with a little magic thrown in, and as he drives in and out of me, he pushes my body to the brink. I collapse over it, freefalling into an orgasm that shifts my world off its axis as the contractions of my body over his sends him into his own climax. He grunts into me. “Oh, fuck, Ellie, yes,” he mutters. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” His words punctuate his thrusts as my body milks every ounce of pleasure from his.
It’s over far too soon, and as he pulls out of me and shimmies back into his jeans before helping me with mine, something here feels different. It’s a renewal of our vows with a lot more meaning behind them this time. It’s a promise that we’re both in this. We’ll both fight for this.
It’s real. Him and me. Forever.
CHAPTER 26
Of all the cities in the world for the Aces to have their season opener, of course it would be Denver. That means a risk of running into Jack and also more anxiety over whether this Allen Hammond guy is going to ram into my husband’s chest in some asshole move to sideline him.
The stakes are higher this time, and it’s palpable as Nicki and I walk into the stadium. We’re wearing our specially-made Aces jerseys showcasing our husbands’ numbers, and we get a few leers as we walk through another team’s home stadium to our seats.
It’s the first Sunday of the regular season, and Luke left Friday to travel with the team to Denver...as did Michelle. She doesn’t have a key position with the team, but since her dad owns the team, apparently that means she can do whatever she wants.
Nicki and I took the short flight yesterday morning, and we’re sharing a suite at the same hotel where the team is staying. We had a quick few minutes with our men last night and again this morning, but otherwise they’ve been busy with their team responsibilities as they get ready to play a team who handily beat them just two weeks ago.