I might have wanted to know where we were or if there was at least a lock on the door, but when that man started kissing me the way he was, moving his body against mine how he was, nothing else mattered, least of all some measly lock on a door.
“I need you, Ryan,” he whispered against my lips, his hands lowering from the wall.
The sound of his zipper opening sounded especially loud under the cover of darkness. In this kind of dark, every other sense was heightened. It was like the loss of one sharpened the others.
My leg wound around his legs, and I pulled him to me before tugging his pants down over his hips. His warm steel pressed into my stomach through the thin material of my dress.
“Then have me,” I breathed, gathering my dress in my hands until I’d exposed myself to him.
A rumble echoed in his throat when he realized I hadn’t been lying about forgetting something when I’d gotten dressed earlier.
“Grant, please,” I begged, squirming against him with raw need.
“Wait,” he panted, sucking in a slow breath like he was trying to oxygenate his brain.
“You’re kidding me, right? What in the world could be worth waiting for right now?” I arched my back off the wall, tipping my hips into him.
I felt him reach for something in his jacket, his lips finding mine once more. Then he pulled back, and even though I couldn’t see anything in this pitch-black room, I could feel his eyes on mine.
“Asking you to marry me.”
The breath I’d been taking caught short, my knees feeling weak from nothing other than emotion. “Are you . . .” My voice wasn’t working right either.
“Asking you to be my wife? Yes, that’s what I’m asking. Or that’s more like what I’m begging.” His hand found where mine were still gathered around my dress, and he pulled the left one free.
My eyes were burning with tears, and the rest of me felt on fire. I’d never known being loved by another could feel so effortless. As the moment caught up to me and I realized what he was asking me and where he was asking me and how he was asking me, my body rocked with my laughter. “Only you would have your pants around your ankles when you asked a girl to marry you.”
His forehead fell into mine. “Only if that girl was you.”
My free hand molded around his jaw, holding him to me. I wanted to say yes so badly. The word was a silent prayer on my lips, but first, he had to know something. Yet one more thing to drop on him, as if I hadn’t put him through enough already.
“I can’t have another child, Grant. I can’t willingly bring another child into this world knowing they have a fifty-fifty chance of getting this one day. I won’t.” My fingers curled into him, the pads of my fingers dragging along the scruff of his stubble. “You deserve to know that. If you want another child—children—I’m not the woman who can give them to you.”
There was a half note of silence, then his body pressed into mine so I couldn’t go anywhere unless I made it past him first. “I don’t give a fuck about that, Ryan. I have my family. You. And Charlie.” The strength of his words filled the room, the truth in them ringing in my ears. “You two are my family, and all I want is to be a family. I don’t need another child. I don’t need the promise of growing old together. I don’t need anything but you two.”
My tears were salty on my lips, but every bit as sweet.
“Marry me, Ryan.” He kissed the corner of my mouth. Then the other. “Marry me, baby.”
My thumb moved down his face until I could feel the pucker of the scar from one of the times his dad had split him open with an unexpected hit. I caressed it with the same thumb I’d broken when my mom bent it back too far after I’d asked if she’d get up and make me something to eat. The scars of our past were carved all over our bodies. But I knew the future we’d create together would heal them all, even the ones that ran deep.
Never erased, but healed. Never forgotten, but forgiven. With Grant, all things were possible, as he’d proven to me over and over again.
“I’ve been married to you as long as I’ve known you, Grant Turner.” My thumb drew across his lips. “I suppose it’s time we make it official.”
He had a ring down my finger before I’d finished my answer, but maybe, like me, he’d known we’d belonged to one another from the very beginning, until the very end.
His hands came around my hips, lifting me up the wall as he slid closer. Then he slowly lowered my body down over him, his breath escaping as I took him inside me.
“You are half of my soul, Ryan Hale. The best part of it. Don’t leave me ever again.” His head fell into the wall beside mine as I tightened around him. “You are within me, so you can’t expect me to live without you.”