38. Dean #2
Especially not knowing she is one connecting door away. The adjoining rooms were nonnegotiable after Denver. I arranged them before we ever landed in Washington and have no intention of giving them up for the rest of this road trip.
I need access to her. Need to know there isn’t a hallway or elevator or locked hotel corridor between us.
A few minutes later I hear her laugh through the wall. Soft. Faint. Enough to make me smile like an idiot.
Then quiet. Then footsteps. I head through the connecting door and find her standing at her windows, the entire Vegas Strip lit up beneath us.
She doesn’t hear me at first. She’s just staring out over the city, in one of my shirts and leggings, blonde hair falling down her back.
God she is beautiful.
I cross the room and slide my arms around her from behind. She melts into me instantly. Like this is where she belongs.
Maybe it’s Vegas. Maybe it’s the win. Maybe it’s the fact that I am so deeply in love with this woman I don’t know how to function around it anymore. But holding her there while the city flashes below us feels dangerously close to forever.
“This is nice,” she murmurs.
“Mm.”
“No,” she says softly, leaning farther back into me. “Like really nice.”
I smile into her hair. “Me in your room?”
She elbows me. “You know what I mean.”
I do. God, I do. This. The last few weeks of this. Her editing clips at my table while I pretend to watch game film. Her stealing my fries and denying it. Falling asleep with her tucked under my arm. Waking up with her hair all over my pillow and wondering how I ever slept without her there.
Maddie turns in my arms and looks up at me. City lights dance in her eyes. “I’m happy,” she says quietly. My chest tightens. “I’m really happy.”
I swallow. Her fingers curl into the front of my shirt. “I wish it could stay like this forever.”
That’s it. That’s the exact second every thought in my head narrows to one unavoidable truth. I do not want temporary with her. I do not want someday. I do not want to spend another second pretending there is a version of my future that doesn’t have her in every corner of it.
I grip her in my arms tighter before I can overthink it. She lets out a surprised little laugh and grabs my forearms.
“It can.”
Her brows lift. “What?”
“It can stay like this forever.” My pulse is pounding now. Hard. Fast. But there is not one ounce of uncertainty in me.
“Marry me.”
She goes still in my arms. Completely still. Those big eyes blink up at me, lips parting like she forgot how to use them, and for one glorious half second I feel like the smartest man alive.
Then my own words catch up to me.
Marry me. Jesus Christ.
I just proposed to the woman I love in a Vegas hotel room while wearing a t-shirt and basketball shorts with no ring, no speech, no plan, and absolutely nothing remotely worthy of her.
“Fuck,” I mutter, dropping my forehead to hers before pulling back and dragging both hands down my face. “No. Nope. Don’t answer that.”
Her brows pull together, a laugh already threatening in her throat. “Dean—”
I release her completely and start pacing in front of the windows, pointing at her as I go because now that I’ve realized what I did, I cannot stop the spiral.
“I’m serious. Do not answer me right now.”
She folds her arms, watching me with entirely too much amusement for a woman who was just proposed to. “You are unbelievable.”
“No, what I am is an idiot,” I tell her, turning back toward her. “You deserve something thoughtful. Something romantic. Something with a ring and candles and me not sounding like I blacked out and accidentally asked you to spend forever with me.”
Her laugh breaks free then, warm and bright, and somehow that only makes me more irritated with myself.
I gesture helplessly around the room. “This is not a proposal. This is me having an emotional breakdown in front of a window.”
She bites her lip.
I keep going because I apparently cannot shut up once I start. “You deserve dramatic, Maddie. You deserve planned out. You deserve me getting down on one knee somewhere that isn’t a hotel suite I bullied management into adjoining because I’m too obsessed to sleep a hallway away from you.”
That does it. She full-on laughs. Actually laughs at me.
I stop pacing and stare at her. “This isn’t funny.”
“It kind of is.”
“It absolutely is not.”
She walks toward me then, still smiling.
Slowly. Like she has all the time in the world. Like she isn’t holding my entire life in the answer she still hasn’t given me. I stand there, breathing too hard, while she closes the distance and places both palms flat against my chest.
“You done?” she asks softly.
“No.”
She grins. “Too bad.”
“Maddie—” She rises onto her toes and kisses me. Not a quick peck. Not a playful interruption. A slow, quiet kiss that steals every frantic thought right out of my head.
When she pulls back, her nose brushes mine. “Yes.”
I blink. My hands automatically come to her waist. “Yes what?”
Her smile turns impossibly softer. “Yes, Dean.”
I stare at her. Actually stare. My brain trying and failing to process the fact that she is looking at me like I just handed her the moon when all I did was panic propose like a lunatic.
“You can’t just say yes.”
“I just did.”
“To that?” I ask shocked.
She shakes her head. “To you.”
My throat goes tight. “Maddie, Baby…” I shake my head, still not convinced she understands. “I had nothing. No ring. No setup. No—”
She slides one hand up and cups my jaw, forcing me to stop talking. “I do not need all that.”
“You deserve all that.”
She smiles. “Maybe.” I frown at her response.
“But I don’t need it,” she whispers. “I need you. I need the man who busted down a door for me. I need the man who can’t sleep unless I’m beside him.
I need the man who apparently manipulated an entire hotel floor so he could have a connecting door to my room. ”
A reluctant huff of laughter leaves me. She presses closer.
“So yes,” she says again, eyes locked on mine. “I will marry you in the middle of your emotional breakdown in front of this window.”
Something hot and overwhelming cracks straight through my chest. I haul her into me so fast she squeals, laughing as I bury my face in her neck.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe.
She wraps her arms around me. “That’s usually the reaction people have when they get engaged.”
I lean back enough to look at her. Still stunned. Still half convinced this is not real. “You are insane.”
She smiles. “And you’re taking too long.”
My brows pull together. “For what?”
She grabs my hand. Then starts dragging me toward the hotel door. “We’re in Vegas, fiancé.”
My heart nearly stops. “Maddie…”
She glances back at me, eyes sparkling. “You wanted dramatic?”