26. All My Fury （Ethan） #4
“I want a wife like the boys in your books, Hattie,” I whisper. “A real marriage. One where we’ll laugh and love and bicker and make up again. One where we wake up next to each other every morning and you bring me coffee and you’ll cover every surface we own in books.”
“God, you…” She laughs roughly. “…you really want that?”
“Fuck yes.” My voice is gruff, but desperate to show her. She needs to see how I’m all in. “I want the full package. You. Even the bits that aren’t perfect. Because I love them, Hattie, every single piece of you.”
She’s crying now, and I can’t bear her tears.
So I reach up, brushing them away with my hands, my mouth.
Predictably, she only cries harder.
“No expiration date this time. No bullshit contract. Just you and me. Just us. I’ll buy you all the books you want and bring you to the greatest libraries on Earth. Anything you want if you’re with me, happily married.”
Then my mouth hovers over hers, aching from holding back.
I squeeze her hand so tight my fingers shake, all I can do to keep from kissing her now. Hell, from throwing her down on the ground and making a very public spectacle of reclaiming my fiancée.
“Say yes,” I whisper. “Say it so I can kiss you again, because I might die if I can’t.”
“Kiss me now,” she whispers. “I mean, if you want to. I’m kinda snotty and—”
No hesitation.
I take her lips with a noise that’s more animal than man.
Finally!
She tastes the way she always does, like sugar and cinnamon and that sweetness under it that’s all Pages.
Her arms wrap around my neck, and I don’t think I was exaggerating.
I might have died if she refused.
Heat rushes through me, from my head to my dick.
I stand up and sit beside her again, pulling her onto my lap.
She grinds against me, her mouth hot, wet heaven.
“You’re so perfect,” I whisper against her lips. “So impossibly good.”
“Um, before you say that, I kinda wanted you to drown in an acid bath until now.”
I pull away and blink at her, lost until she bursts out laughing.
Between kisses, we laugh, dragging my mouth along her temple.
“I would’ve deserved it. Glad you held off on melting my skin.”
“Me too!” Her hands tighten in my hair as she rocks against me again. “…are you that hard?”
“Weeks without you, Hattie. It’s practically a state of being.”
She laughs brightly, and goddamn, do I savor it.
I never thought I’d win that laugh back.
“So will you?” I whisper. “Will you marry me?”
“Ethan.” Her voice breaks around my name. “Yes! You know I will.”
“Thank fuck,” I breathe, pulling her back in for another sweltering kiss. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she says, sniffing back tears. “I thought for sure you didn’t. Or if you did, I never thought you’d say it.”
I smooth the hair back from her face.
“I did my idiot best not to. But I was lying to myself. I was scared what loving you would mean. Not anymore. This life with you—that’s all I’ll ever need.”
She looks at me with her chin tilted down, green eyes shining from under those long lashes.
“Then let’s do it. Let’s do everything!”
I kiss her giddy little soul out again until a loud whistle from behind us snaps me out of my trance.
Margot holds up four coffees in a cardboard carrier.
“Holy smokes. Good thing I went with iced coffee when I made the caffeine run.”
Hattie stiffens on my lap.
I tighten my hold on her.
Partly to hide my raging hard-on, partly because I don’t want her going anywhere. Not when she’s found her way back to me.
“Since you’re interrupting like usual, we have an announcement,” I say.
Margot isn’t listening. She sets the coffee down on the empty space next to us and pulls out two. She turns and hands one to Julia. I blink in surprise.
“Oh, right. Mom was with us when we drove down,” Hattie explains, her hands still laced around my neck. “She was just finding somewhere to park. Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetie,” Julia says.
She’s not as brash as usual, hanging back and accepting the coffee. Her eyes, the same forest green as Hattie’s, flit to me and away again.
I clear my throat awkwardly, wondering if I owe her an apology too. But Pages shoots first.
“Mom, we’re engaged again! For real this time,” she squeals and I smile. There’s raw amusement in her eyes as she looks at me. “He apologized and asked me to marry him and I said yes.”
Margot’s eyes light up. She gulps her coffee, probably to avoid spraying it out her nose.
“Holy crap. You made him grovel, right?” She wrinkles her nose. “Also, this coffee tastes burned.”
“Could’ve warned you,” I say.
“He was on his hands and knees. So unbelievably sweet,” Hattie gushes.
My face heats.
It might be mortifying, but if this is what it takes to have my woman back, I’d pay the price ten thousandfold.
I slide a possessive hand along her hip. “The only woman who could ever reduce me to begging.”
“That’s beautiful,” Margot says dryly, but she can’t stop the incoming smile. “It’s about time. Both of you. Especially you, Ethan.”
Julia sniffs, and it’s her turn for the tears to come in hot.
“Are you sure, though? It’s so sudden,” she asks Hattie.
And even though she’s already said yes, I still feel myself tensing as I watch Hattie’s face. But her smile could make the sun jealous.
“Mom, yes!” She strokes my hair, trailing her finger down along the stubble dusting my jaw. “I’m more sure about this than the first time I opened Harry Potter. And that’s really really sure. Like so certain you could—”
I don’t let her finish.
I just kiss her again, in front of her mom and my sister and the entire universe.
I kiss her to show our minds are made up, and my days of self-inflicted catastrophes are over.