“Brenda!” he calls from the living room. “Are you here?”
“Out back,” I answer, glad for the distraction from the doom and gloom of my thoughts.
“Come on, I’ve got something to show you,” he says breathlessly, the breeze mussing up his hair as he stands in the open doorway to the back porch. The sparkling excitement in his eyes is contagious.
“What is it?” I ask as I walk to him.
He grabs my hand and pulls me into the house, slamming the porch door behind me. By them, I’m sure this is just some little game to get me into bed in the middle of the day—a game I love to play along with.
But he leads me out of the house, grabbing my helmet and purse from the table by the front door on the way out of the house. He mounts his bike and hands me my stuff. “Get on.”
I take the helmet and purse and do as he asks. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” he says, grinning. I’m dying to know, but I know him well enough by now to know that I’ll never get the answer out of him. He loves his little surprises, and I love him surprising me. So I just wrap my arms around his waist and tell him to drive.
It’s not a long ride and at the end of it, we roll into the last place I expected to be in. We’re in a big, gravel parking lot next to a fancy looking, five-story building surrounded by trees and meadows. The view is all rolling green hills and sky, and the parking lot is half full of expensive cars—Audis and BMWs and other shiny black things.
“What is this place?” I ask, watching a woman in a lavender nurse’s uniform wheel out a lady with long snow-white hair in a wheelchair. They’re followed by a middle-aged woman with curled ash blonde hair, that’s wearing so much perfume I can smell it clearly from ten yards away. They make their way to a BMW SUV parked right in front of the door.
“A new home for your mom,” he answers, grinning, though there’s a tightness in his eyes that grows as I snap my head in his direction to glare at him.
“Now wait, this is the best place in the country for things like what your mom has. She could get better here. I know, I checked it all out using Hawk’s fancy toys and techniques,” he says, talking fast the way he always does when he’s nervous or thinks I won’t go along with his plan. “And they have an opening right now. I got you an interview. We could have your mom in here by tomorrow. Think about it, she’d be close by and she might get better. I think we should do it.”
“I could never afford a place like this,” I say. “Never in a million years. Even if I get ten waitressing jobs.”
I hate waitressing, but after my stint with the Sinners, it is the only thing I’m qualified for. I’ve been avoiding going for that kind of work, but I’ve applied for everything else around here with no luck.
He lays his hand on my lower back and pulls me closer. “Come on, babe, you know how it is. What’s mine is yours.”
“We’re not even married,” I mumble softly because I really don’t want to throw this gift back in his face. But I also really, really don’t want to keep mooching off him for everything anymore. It’s not fair, not after everything he’s already done for me.
“And that’s another thing I thought we could take care of while we’re down in Vegas,” he says, smiling but kinda sheepishly. “If you want, that is.”
My eyes are as wide as they’ll go and my heart is racing so hard it’s bouncing the breaths I’m trying to take right back out.
“Or we could wait,” he says, not smiling quite so wide anymore. “But as far as I’m concerned, there’s no point. You’re the only woman I’ll ever want.”
“Yes!” I finally manage to say, and it comes out much too loud and frantic, causing both the nurse and the blonde woman to look at us sharply while they’re loading the white-haired woman into the SUV.
“Yes?” he says, his eyes very soft. I nod like a madwoman.
He kisses me then, as passionately and deeply as always, but with more permanence, more solidity, and more depth as ever. When he finally breaks away, the two women by the SUV are still staring at us, but I only really have eyes for him and the little box in his hands. Inside it is a silver ring, with a huge dark blue rock with stars sparkling from it.
“It’s not a diamond,” he says. “But I liked this stone better because it reminded me of your eyes.”
“It’s perfect,” I say as I take it out and slide it on my finger, moving it this way and that so it sparkles like the night sky over the desert. “Absolutely perfect. I love it.”
“Oh, good,” he says. “Blaze called me an idiot for not going with a diamond. You can tell him he was wrong.”
“I will,” I say and wrap my arms around his neck.
“As for the matter of your job,” he says. “Hawk’s been hinting very strongly that he’d very much like your clear and concise handwriting to go with the work I do for him.”
“What? A woman doing an MC’s most secret work?” I ask. “I didn’t think that’s even possible.”
“Well, there’s no actual rule against it,” he says, shrugging. “And Cross isn’t exactly a traditionalist or whatever.”
“Well then, I’d love to give it a try,” I say and hug him tighter.
The best day of my life is still the day he stood by me, sheltering me from Monarch’s revenge frenzy, but this one is now a very close contender for the spot. And as he kisses me again, tenderly yet passionately, and the world disappears in the soft whirling of colors around us, it takes first place. Bad things are behind, only good things are ahead.
I thought a love like the one that’s flooding me right now didn’t exist outside of fairytales.
I was wrong.
THE END
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Also by Lena Bourne
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