“I’m sure you will. Come on.” I reach forward and fix his tie. “We’d better go.”
Since this town is so small, it only takes ten minutes to move from door to door. We travel in Bry’s Camaro – not very fitting for my dress, I might add – and pull up a block away from the church that today’s services will be held in.
Helping me out of the car and tucking my arm in his, Bry proves he can be fancy sometimes too.
“You look really handsome.” I lean against him as we walk. “I meant to tell you that.”
“Aww, thanks.” His chest bounces with soft laughter. “My mom helped me pick this out.”
“Hey, Bry?”
He presses a kiss to the side of my head. “Mmm?”
“How does it feel to be such a momma’s boy?”
He throws his head back on a laugh. “It feels fuckin’ good. You can’t shame this out of me, Madilyn. I was in love the day I met her.”
“You mean, like, when you were a baby?”
He lifts a brow and helps me step up onto the sidewalk. “It was love at first sight, and there’s never been a time I doubted my love since. My mom is…” He ponders. “Well, she’s old-school fuckin’ crazy. She will take a man out if they hurt her family.”
“Wow,” I drawl. “Can’t believe she didn’t pass that behavior down to her children.”
“Oh, she did.” He laughs. “My sisters are psychos too, but they’re on my side of this war, so I let them do their thing and wipe everyone else out. My mom is fierce, and smart. She’s beautiful and kind, but she’s no one’s fool. She will take a fucker out if they hurt us.”
“So if you and I decide to stop seeing each other…?”
He grins. “I’ll cry, which already makes you dead meat. Honestly, it’s best if you stay with me forever and give me all the good sex and shit.”
“So romantic.” I give an exaggerated sigh and melt into his side. “I can’t believe this is the man that makes my heart race.”
“Hey, Maddi?”
Now my heart really does race. His tone makes my stomach whoosh. “Mm?”
“Do you love me?”
And then my heart stops.
I stumble in my heels, and let him catch me as I try to study his eyes. “Um… what?”
He tucks my arm securely in his, and pats my hand, like he thinks that’s a decent way to comfort me. “Because I think I love you. I don’t know love for people outside my family, so I guess what I feel could just be indigestion or something. But…” He shrugs. “I dunno. I miss the shit out of you when you’re gone. And I feel nice when you’re right in front of me. I yearn for you even if you’re in the next room, and my face hurts when we eat with my family and I get to watch you interact with them. I look at your body and want to mount you.”
“Charming.”
He smiles. “I just… well… I’ve known women in the past. I’ve had fun with women in the past.”
“We don’t need to discuss them.”
He chuckles. “My point is, I already felt something that very first night I met you.”
“Yeah, what you felt was my knee slamming against your nutsack, Bry.”
“No, stop.” He stops us just fifty feet from the church doors, and turns back to cup my face. “I felt something the night I met you. I asked you to ride with me, Maddi.”
I nod, because that’s all I have to give him. If I open my mouth, I might say things that will make my stomach twist.
“You didn’t ride with me, but fuck, you left me thinking about you. No chick has ever done that to me before.”
“You thought about me because I had your hat.”
“You having my hat was…” he bobs his head, “worrisome, since I wasn’t sure you were thinking of me with the same fondness I thought of you. But the fact you had it provided the perfect opportunity for me to drop by your office. Do you recall Tuck? My friend at the track?”
“Mm?”
“I told him I would invite him to the wedding.”
I frown. “Whose wedding?”
“Our wedding.” He presses a kiss to my gaping lips. “I didn’t even know you yet, but I was already telling him to be ready with a suit.”
“Bryan!” My voice cracks. “You were just being silly. You’re always being silly, and that—”
“I don’t know how to define love, Maddi. I don’t know how to say one way or the other, but I do know that when I think of being old, I see you there. Don’t ask me how I see that shit, and especially don’t ask about how, simply after speaking with you for ten minutes, I knew. I just do.”
“You’re being crazy,” I whimper. “Maybe today has got you all sentimental or something. We’re going to a wedding, and—”
He angles my head and slams his lips against mine until I cry. He swallows the sounds down, and holds me extra tight when all I want to do it melt against the sidewalk.
When he senses my submission, he pulls back and studies my eyes. “I don’t know everything, but at this point in my life, I see you here, and my heart does some weird shit. I don’t know the secret to something that lasts forever, but there’s a legend in my family that when a Kincaid finds his One, it all clicks into place. There’s no logic, no sense, no rhyme or reason. There’s just what we feel. And fuck, but we have a perfect success rate so far. Not a single divorce since Grandpa Bry started it all.”
I turn weak under his probing eyes. Nervous under his expectant stare.
I drop my gaze and nibble on the lipstick he’s already ruined. “Bry…”
“You don’t love me back?” He brings my face back up so he can see my eyes. “You don’t feel anything?”
I nod. I swallow my nerves, then I swallow again. “My family comes with a perfect divorce rate, Bry. I’m not sure I know a single married couple that is still with the person they first declared their love to.”
“But now you know my family,” he pushes. “That changes the ratios for you, right?” His voice shakes. “You don’t love me back?”
“Just like you…” I hedge. “I find it difficult to define love, since I don’t really know what it means in its purest sense. Unlike you, I don’t feel that undying love for my family. They’re…” I sigh. “Associates, I guess. But when you walk into a room, I feel nice too. When we eat with your family, my smile hurts from watching you interact with them.” Then I swoon a little. “Especially when you interact with Alyssa.”
“She’s my best friend.”
I snicker and lower my eyes. “When you speak to me, my heart flutters. And when we’re in bed, it soars. When you’re obnoxious, I get this uncontrollable urge to smack you… with my car. But while I consider my options for murder, I’m smiling.”
He snorts.
“I guess… I’m not qualified to declare love. But I feel something for you. And it’s not something I want to give up.”
“How about…” Brows pulled close, he takes my left hand and slowly, very gently runs his fingers along mine. He balls my hand into a fist, but then he pulls my pinky out straight. My pointer finger. My thumb.