“No buts,” he says, his hands clutching mine. “I went about this all wrong. The papers were supposed to be a grand gesture, something to tell you that you’ve paid off all your debt, that I want to start fresh, that I want it to be your decision that we’re together, no deals or obligations. But it obviously didn’t work out the way I planned. I didn’t think about how this would make you feel.”
He reaches out and cups my cheeks, his eyes shining. “I do love you, Matthew Morris. And I want to marry you all over again, while we’re sober. Do it right so we can remember it. I want to remember every part of it.”
“What?” I breathe, and Cooper falls to his knee, grabbing the box from my hand and holding it out to me.
“Matthew Morris, I have loved you for ages. You’re my heart, my breath. You’re everything. Will you marry me, for real this time? But only because you want to, because you love me?”
I sniffle, my heart having gone through all the emotions—anger, grief, denial, and now finally throbbing with happiness.
“I do love you,” I say as Coop kneels before me, his golden eyes meeting mine.
“Is that a yes?”
I stare down at him, at my future.
“Yes. Yes of course.”
Coop’s shoulders sag in relief, and he shoots me a wobbly grin, standing up and throwing himself into my arms, kissing my watery eyes.
“Thank fuck for that. Oh god, I was so worried. I thought I’d lost you.”
“I got a ticket for trying to destroy the papers in the ocean.”
“I’ll pay it. I’ll pay for everything for always. Just never leave me.”
I nod, tucking my face into his neck and breathing him in. Oh god, I thought we were finished, but we’re not. We’re not through yet.
“I have everything planned. Our new beginning, Matthew. It’s just waiting for us.”
I look down at him and then kiss him senseless.
My beautiful husband.
My forever.
Epilogue
Mitch
The mouth around my dick is wet and tight as I grab on to the full head of hair and yank. I hear him gag and my skin prickles at the sound. Fuck yes, this cunt is getting what he deserves. Offering to meet me and suck my cock in a public place—only a whore would do that. And so I treat him like one. A fucking slut begging to be used.
I let my dick slide out of his mouth, and then I shove it back in, listening to him moan as I fuck his throat.
What a loser—a pathetic, needy man on his knees for a stranger. I can see his free hand working his own dick through his pants, getting off on the degradation. He wants this just as much as I do.
But then again, they never complain. I’ve had my dick sucked hundreds of times by random men. In car parks, on beaches, in clubs.
Once even by a cop who pulled me over in the woods for loitering.
They’re always so desperate.
Fuck.
My balls draw up as I hold his face against my groin, smashing his nose against my neatly trimmed pubic hair and forcing him to swallow. He loves it, loves choking on me, loves fighting to breathe. When I finally let him inhale, he gasps but doesn’t pull off, only sucks me harder, so rough and desperate that I’m seeing stars.
When I come, I make sure to explode across his face, leaving him messy and wrecked. Marking him, making it hard for him to walk around without evidence of what he just did. And then wordlessly, I pull up my pants and stare down at him, his dick straining from his pants, his face a cum-covered mask.
“Passable,” I grunt and then pat his head like the dog he is, leaving him kneeling in the sand as I trudge away. I never reciprocate. Never. That’s not what this is.