A laugh slipped out of me. “Really, a poor showing if I ever saw one. I told you you should have proposed.”
He shot me a crooked smile. “Don’t tempt me, Tess.”
My heart and my stomach switched places, my smile wide and cheeks hot. “Luke Bennet, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you had plans.”
The look he gave me liquified my insides. “Oh, I have plans all right. And when I implement them, you’ll know. But first, move-in day. I’ve got to make sure you can handle Luke who leaves his socks lying around and doesn’t close drawers.”
“You act like we haven’t spent the last six weeks joined at the hip.”
“Joined at the something, definitely in the vicinity of the hip.” He waggled his brows as we reached the door to my building and headed inside. “Anyway, now you’re gonna get the real deal. The unabridged, unadulterated Luke Bennet. The one who never hangs up hand towels and puts dishes next to the sink instead of in it.”
I smirked at him as we climbed the stairs. “Are you trying to scare me off?”
“Nah, but full disclosure—I will leave laundry in the basket for a month if it means I don’t have to fold anything.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I know. What are you even doing with me?”
“I ask myself that every day.”
He pouted next to me while I unlocked the front door.
But I smiled, clarifying, “If I could figure out one reason why you’re with me, I’d be satisfied.”
“Oh, I’ll give you a hundred, Tess Monroe.”
The way he said it was a promise or a warning—I couldn’t be sure. Either way, I wanted every one.
“A hundred, huh?” I turned for my room with him on my heels, hoping at least a few of them involved kissing.
“Mmhmm,” he hummed, kicking the door closed and setting the boxes down. He stepped into me with a predatory look on his face that hit me in every soft spot of my body. “For starters, your lips are the sweetest thing I’ve tasted. Your devotion to what you love inspires me. Forever used to feel like a cage, a trap, but then you taught me that forever is an adventure, and I want to spend every minute of it with you.”
I wanted to tell him all the reasons I loved him too, but he kissed me before I could. Laid me down in the bed we would share, in the room where we’d spend our honeymoon and where we’d conceive our own Bennet brood. I had a glimmer of it then, a tingle of hope, and a rush of possibility for a future that would come true.
I’d live every moment with joy.
And I’d love him with every heartbeat, to my very last breath.