One

Chapter Thirty-Five

IT’S YOU

“I don’t believe it.” Penny grabbed the bottle of wine from me. “And I’m cutting you off because you’re a light weight. I bet you can’t even stand straight now.”

I stared at the bags of my belongings cluttering the floor just inside my front door. Trzy and I were home again.

“Funny …” The word slurred from my lips. “I was going to let the lease on this place go in February. I guess fate knew something I didn’t.”

Penny shook her head. She could shake her head all she wanted, but it wouldn’t change my situation.

“There’s no way he thinks you’re a mistake. I have never in my life met a guy who looks and talks about a woman the way Cage Monaghan worships you.”

I wanted to cry more, but the alcohol had dried up my tears. “Bad timing, I guess. Maybe I can just be his off-season fling.”

“The guy tried to get you pregnant, more than once. That’s not a fling, honey. That’s a lifetime commitment. He said he wanted to marry you.”

I shook my head. “No. When I asked if he was proposing he said, ‘sure.’” I laughed because every other reaction hurt too damn bad.

“I don’t even want to be here. I want to leave him a note that says, ‘good luck, hope you get your ring,’ then I want to go back to San Francisco and hold my new niece, Harley, and go to lunch with Jessica, and bug Luke at work between patients. ”

Penny leaned forward and grabbed my hand, giving it a firm squeeze. “You want to feel loved.”

After staring at her hand on mine for a few moments, I looked up and nodded. My tear ducts decided to work again. “I want to feel grounded again.”

Penny stood. “I get it. And I don’t regret most things in my life, but the running? That I regret. Wait until he gets home and if you still want to go, then walk away. But don’t run. OK?”

I wiped the stream of tears from my cheeks. “Okay.”

CAGE

We won. One more game until the playoffs, but we already secured a first round bye.

The second I stepped off the bus, I ran to my truck, desperate to get home—desperate to get to Lake.

I hated how we left things. It ate me alive for three days.

I wanted to call. I wanted to text, but I needed to stay focused.

I knew the words would mean more in person.

“Lake?” I called. Her vehicle wasn’t in the garage, but it made no sense that she wouldn’t be there, given the late hour.

I flipped on the light in the bedroom. No Lake. No Trzy. Dropping my bag on the floor I walked to the closet and switched on the light.

Empty.

All of her stuff was gone. It felt as barren as my heart.

“Fuck.” I closed my eyes.

After looking for a note or any sign of her and coming up empty, I hopped back in my truck and drove to her apartment.

It was late or early. I didn’t care, as I banged on her door. A good minute or so later she opened it, standing before me in a Hello Kitty top and matching shorts. It took all the strength I had to not drop to my knees and beg her to come home. Her eyes were red, her posture lifeless.

“Hey.” She smiled and I hated how forced it was. I wanted to own each one of her smiles, but in that moment I didn’t feel like I owned anything but her grief.

“You moved out.”

A slow nod.

It hurt. It hurt so fucking bad.

I cleared my throat. “Why?”

She wet her lips and rubbed them together as her eyes shined with tears. “I hated being your mistake.”

“What?” I narrowed my eyes.

“You said you didn’t want this to be a mistake.

” She blinked and the tears broke free down her beautiful cheeks.

“I- I can’t sit around waiting for you to decide if we’re a mistake.

I can’t handle feeling like your whole world one minute and then being proposed to with a ‘sure’ the next.

I can’t be with you and not be with you.

I can’t handle having you so close and not feeling like I can touch you.

” She wiped her face and sucked in a shaky breath.

“Jesus, Lake …” I pressed my palms to the side of my head, shaking it side to side.

“I didn’t mean us.” My hands went from my head to hers, clenching her hair a little tighter than I should have, but I needed her absolute, undivided attention to the words that I had to say.

“Football … my fucking job. That was what I meant when I said I didn’t want it to be a mistake.

That was what I meant when I said I understood if it was too much for you. ”

I bent down until we were at eye level, our faces just inches apart. “It’s you, Lake. It’s you every damn day of the week and twice on any game day. It’s you today, it’s you tomorrow, it’s you a fucking millennium from now. Get. That.”

A sob ripped from her chest, and I had to fight my own fucking tears. Nothing in my whole life had ever hit me as hard as the gut-wrenching realization that this woman—my whole damn world—didn’t truly feel the infinite depth of my love for her.

LAKE

Harder.

I wanted him to hold me harder. I needed his hands everywhere at the same time. I needed his touch to breathe life back into me because leaving him felt like a slow death. When I opened the door, I barely had a pulse.

“Cage …”

He kissed me, pushing me backwards and kicking the door shut behind him.

“You’re everything,” he murmured into my neck, pulling my top off. His mouth dropped to suck in my nipple as my shirt fell to the floor.

I slid his shirt up his torso as he continued to lead me backwards toward my bedroom.

When my legs hit the edge of the bed, Cage dropped to his knees and pulled down my shorts and panties, his lips eager to devour every inch of my skin.

“Sit,” he whispered with his lips pressed to the top of my left leg.

I sat. He slowly removed my leg, and rolled down the sheath leaving me completely naked.

We went from a hundred miles an hour to zero in a matter of seconds.

Resting his forehead on my leg, he breathed in and breathed out like it took herculean strength to make each conscious exchange of air as his hand caressed my residual limb, feeling every angle as if he needed to memorize it.

“Lake?” he whispered with his head still pressed to my leg.

I ghosted my hand along the back of his head, feeling a little unsteady—a little afraid—because he seemed so vulnerable.

“Yes.” I exhaled a slow breath, attempting to calm the surging march of my heart trying to break through my chest.

Cage inched his head up just enough to meet my gaze. “I love you.” The pain in his expression brought more tears to my eyes. He owned every single one of my emotions. “Marry me.”

Oh God …

My eyes and nose burned with a whole new level of emotion desperate to break free.

“Give me you. Give me every tear. Give me every breath. Give me every fear. Give me every touch. Give me every smile. Give me every day.”

He dipped his head and kissed a trail down my leg and over my knee to where it ended. He kissed every inch of skin until I swear to God I could feel the rest of my leg, until I could feel all ten toes touching the ground.

“Lake…” another kiss “Ivy…” another kiss “…Jones…” his eyes came back to mine “give me forever. Give me the one thing I cannot live without…” grabbing my backside, he scooted me closer to the edge of the bed and pressed his lips to my chest over my heart “…give me you.”

I started by giving him my body while my mind played catch-up.

The only fear I had at that moment was the possibility that he’d try to make love to me with patient, calculated moves.

That’s not what I needed. I needed our physical love to be all-consuming.

I needed it to feel as painful as my emotions.

His touch—I wanted it to feel branded into my skin, into my soul.

He took every part of me and he took it unapologetically.

I felt needed, possessed, and yes, completely consumed.

The love? It decimated the pain and doubt that life had allowed to creep into my mind.

His touch? It owned me and as if he knew exactly what I needed, he didn’t wait for me to give him anything …

he took it. He took every single piece of me.

“Yes,” I whispered into his neck, my sweaty, completely-spent body a rag doll on top of his.

“When?” he mumbled, like exhaustion had paralyzed his ability to speak.

“I’ll marry you yesterday.” My lips curled into a grin against his skin.

His hands cupped my ass.

“Perfect.”

“My ass?”

He chuckled. “Everything.”

“In case you’re wondering, ‘sure’ was not a proposal.

This … what you said to me, the oh-my-god-that-was-sex-from-another-dimension thing that just happened, was the world’s best proposal.

I was right in China to worry about you fumbling, Monaghan.

Textbook rookie mistake. But you redeemed yourself with the best game-winning Hail Mary of all time. Congratulations.”

His grip on my ass turned into a bruising one. “Are you congratulating me on the sex or the proposal? If it’s the sex, then I’m going to be pissed. Name one time I’ve fumbled with the sex? Name one time you’ve faked an orgasm with me. Name one time you haven’t screamed my name so loud—”

“Down boy.” I giggled. “You’ve never fumbled the sex.”

He eased his grip. “I’m sorry … so very sorry. I let the stress consume me. I was so afraid to give you a second of my time because I knew it would never be enough. I can’t find the balance. I’m an addict with you. I can’t just take one sip, one hit. It’s never enough and that need consumes me.”

“Well, in your all-or-nothing world, I can’t be the nothing.

However, I couldn’t live with myself if you made me the everything right now.

You have other people counting on you, and I want to see you do this just as much as they do.

So don’t make me the reason you hate it, make me the reason you love it.

You can have both. Stop making it a choice. ”

Cage ghosted his fingers up my back and threaded them through my hair, lifting my head up to look at him. “But just to be perfectly clear on this: I asked you to marry me and you said yes. Correct?”

My grin gave him the answer first. “Yes. I’ll marry you.”

“Because at one point you said if I asked you, you’d say no. So technically you can’t blame a guy for easing into it with a comment like ‘sure.’ No one likes to get rejected.”

“I was confused that we even had that conversation. You’d already told me you were going to marry me even if you had to ‘drag me to the altar and fuck a yes out of me.’”

His chest vibrated with laughter as he bent an arm back behind his head, tipping his chin down toward me. “And you were OK with that being my official proposal.”

“Well…” I shrugged “…yeah. It was hot and spontaneous and a little caveman-like.”

“You want me to be a caveman with you?”

“I could think of worse things, and I bet you’d look good in animal skin, carrying a stick or wooden bat-looking thingy to protect your woman.”

“I … um … sorry, no. The Neanderthal role doesn’t work for me.”

“Oh, so we’re role-playing. Well then, I’m sure the football player/cheerleading thing is your area of expertise. Have you ever had sex with a cheerleader?”

Cage shook his head. “I’m not doing this.

No way. I’m not doing the ‘how many girls have you slept with?’ You like to say what is and is not us.

Well, this is not us. If you can think back to what has happened in the past hour, then you know what we have is a storm …

an explosive phenomena larger than life …

something so far beyond any comparison.”

My breath caught in my chest. We were still falling. Fuck gravity. My love for that man was so beyond healthy, I should have been committed. I scooted up and kissed him, and then rubbing my nose along his, I smiled. “But seriously, how many women have you slept with?”

He flipped me over, pinning me to the bed. “Only one that I care to remember.”