Chapter 16
Sixteen
Ina
Beau’s taking me to dinner. Not our usual takeout on his couch, leftovers at mine, or me cooking while he stands behind me at the stove with his hands on my hips and his mouth on my neck, pretending to be helpful.
An actual date. A real restaurant. The kind with candles and cloth napkins and a menu that doesn’t have prices next to anything, which means everything costs too much.
He picks me up in a clean truck. His hair is combed.
He’s in a dark button-down, the one that makes his shoulders look like they’re trying to escape the fabric.
Dark jeans. Nice boots. And he shaved. Not all the way…
just trimmed the stubble close, so his square jaw is sharp and his full lips stand out even more than usual.
He opens my door. Takes my hand to help me in.
And presses a kiss to my cheek that lingers…
his warm lips soft on my skin, his breath fanning over my ear, his scent hitting me like a drug.
Cedar. Leather. Clean skin. I close my eyes and breathe him in and think: I get to keep this man. This is my life now.
“Are you okay?” I ask with a smirk, catching him staring at me once I’m in the truck. His golden eyes, traveling slowly over my face, my neck, the dress I chose…deep green, fitted, the neckline showing just enough cleavage to make his jaw tighten.
“You’re really pretty,” he rumbles.
My cheeks warm up.
“Thank you, baby. You clean up pretty good yourself.”
The restaurant is candlelit. Rustic but upscale.
The kind of place that feels like someone’s fancy barn but charges city prices.
My steak melts in my mouth. Dessert is some chocolate thing that’s borderline sexual.
I eat every bite of everything because I am not one of those women who orders a salad on a date. I have curves to maintain.
Beau watches me eat the way he watches me do everything.
Like it’s the most interesting thing happening in the world.
His golden eyes, warm in the candlelight, big hand wrapped around his glass, fingers dwarfing the stem.
His thumb brushing slowly across my knuckles on the table between courses.
Unhurried. Possessive. Just reminding me that he’s there. Like I could forget.
He tells me about a new bull they’re evaluating.
I tell him about Lilah’s latest crisis: her roommate’s boyfriend who won’t leave their dorm.
He laughs low and easy, his eyes crinkling.
I tell him about Miles’s last text, which was just a photo of a sandwich with no context.
He shakes his head and says, “That kid’s funny.
” And the casual way he talks about my children, like they’re already family, does something to my chest that I don’t have words for.
We hold hands across the table. His rough, calloused palm against my smooth one. His thumb tracing circles on my wrist where my pulse is probably telling him everything I’m too full of amazing food and feelings to say.
After dinner, he drives us back to his place. The stars are bright. The land is quiet. And when we get inside, it’s just us. Silence. The fire he lit before he left, burning low in the hearth.
He stands behind me. Slides the zipper of my dress down. Slow. His knuckles dragging down my spine. His lips follow…pressing soft kisses down the back of my neck, between my shoulder blades, lower. The dress pools around my feet. He turns me around.
His golden eyes move over my body in the firelight. My bare tits. My belly. The black lace panties I wore because I knew exactly how tonight was going. His jaw clenches, corded throat working. His massive hands hang at his sides, fingers flexing.
“Come here,” I say.
He does. And he fucks me like he means it. Slow. Deep. His tall body covering mine on his massive bed, rough hands laced with mine above my head. His mouth on mine, eyes open. Every stroke, a promise. Every breath shared.
No rush. No frenzy. Just my man inside me, moving like we have all the time in the world. Like this is the beginning of something.
When I come, it’s quiet. A slow, rolling wave that starts deep in my belly and spreads through my whole body. My back arches off the bed. My fingers tighten in his. He follows…pressing deep, holding, his forehead against mine, his groan vibrating through my chest.
After, we just lie there tangled, sweaty, and bare. Beau wrapped around me under the sheets. His chest against my back. One arm, heavy around my waist. His face in my hair. The fire cracking low.
“Been waiting to do this right,” he murmurs.
I smile into the pillow. “I think you did it very right.”
“Not that.”
I hear his arm move. The nightstand drawer opening. Something small sliding across wood.
Then his hand appears in front of me. Holding a small velvet box.
My whole body goes still.
“Beau…”
“I know it’s fast.” His voice is rough. Low. Close to my ear, his breath warm on my neck. “I know we haven’t done things the usual way. But I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
He opens the box.
The ring catches the firelight and I stop breathing. It’s a golden stone…warm, bright, glowing in the low light. Set in a delicate gold band. It’s not flashy. Not oversized. It’s perfect. And the color…
“It’s a yellow diamond,” he says. And there’s something in his voice I’ve never heard. Something almost shy. My big, commanding, possessive man sounds nervous. “You always tell me how much you like my eyes. I thought you might like having a piece of me with you… all the time.”
I look at the ring. Then I turn in his arms and look at him.
His golden eyes. The ring. Identical. The exact same warm, pale gold that’s been undoing me since the fair. He found a stone that matches his own eyes and put it on a ring for me to wear forever.
Pink creeps up his cheekbones. My bull is blushing.
I’m going to die. I’m going to die right here in this bed because my heart is too full and my chest can’t hold it.
“Ina,” he says. “Marry me?”
I don’t say yes right away. Not because I’m not sure…
I’ve never been more sure of anything, but because I need a second.
I need a second to be inside this moment.
To feel the weight of it. To look at this man…
this quiet, stubborn, beautiful man who showed up on my porch and took my whole life apart and put it back together better…
and understand that he’s mine. Really mine. That this is real.
“Yes,” I whisper. Then louder, because he deserves loud: “Yes, I’ll marry you, Beau Redding. You crazy cowboy.”
He grins. Big. Real. The kind of grin I almost never get…the one that breaks his whole face open and makes him look like a kid and the sexiest man alive at the same time. He slides the ring on my finger. It fits perfectly. Of course it does.
I hold my hand up. Watch the firelight play in the yellow diamond. His eyes looking back at me from my hand.
“There’s an inscription,” he says. “On the inside.”
I tug the ring up just enough to tilt the band. Tiny letters are engraved in the gold.
I Carry Your Heart with Me.
I burst into tears. Big, ugly, snot-running, full-body tears.
The kind I haven’t cried since Lilah was born and they put her on my chest and I realized my heart was living outside my body.
Beau pulls me onto his chest. Wraps me tight in his massive arms. His wide chest, warm and solid under my cheek.
His scent …cedar, leather, home…surrounding me.
I cry and cry, and he holds me and doesn’t say a word. Just his big hand in my hair. His lips pressing soft against my temple. His heartbeat steady under my ear.
When I finally catch my breath…sniffling, hiccupping, definitely leaving mascara stains on his very nice sheets…I lift my head. Look into his beautiful eyes. The ones that matched my ring. The ones that saw me before I saw myself.
“You’re not going to let me breathe, are you?” I whisper.
He grins. That heartbreaking, earth-shattering, full Beau Redding grin.
“Not a fuckin’ chance.”