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“She came here to get back together with me. She and my brother broke up. I told her no.” He scratched the back of his neck, and his face darkened. “I told her I was in love with someone else, that I was going to beg her to marry me. I told her to turn around and go back to Canada because I didn’t want her.”
“You told her all that?” I said in a small voice.
“I did.” His earnest gaze met mine. “You probably didn’t know I was planning to propose.” He patted his pocket. “I even have a ring here. I was going to wait a bit. We only started dating, and I didn’t want you to feelrushed. But I planned to get down on one knee and ask you as soon as I thought you’d say yes.”
“You bought a ring?” Stunned, I could only spit out one word. “Isn’t that kind of sudden? We’ve only been seeing each other for . . . well, days.”
“I love you. I have almost from the moment I met you.” He swallowed. “I bought it yesterday. I didn’t plan to spring it on you right away. I was going to take my time, work up to it. Give you a chance to know me completely before I begged you to be with me forever.”
“You can’t love me.”
“I do.” His soft smile rose, but it held sadness that speared right through me. “You’re everything I could ever want. You’re kind. Thoughtful. Generous. And you make me laugh. I love kissing you, touching you, and just being with you. I want to spend the rest of my life showing you how special you are, how much you mean to me.”
This wasn’t possible. “For so long, I’ve done all I could to please everyone else. I kept our apartment tidy to make my mom happy, though I doubted she noticed. She had to work two jobs to support us.”
“You were a kid. It was her job to tidy the apartment, not the other way around.”
I shrugged. “My mom knew where my dad was, so I wrote him long, cheery letters that I hoped would make him smile. I wanted him to realize what he was missing out on. I wanted him to know me. He never replied. For a while, I wondered if Mom somehow figured out I was writing to him and hid them. You know, like in those stories. The woman discovers her dad didn’t get any of her letters, and when she hands them to him, he criesand hugs her.” I sighed. “My dad didn’t cry when he got them. When he died and they tracked me down because I was his next of kin and sole heir, I found the last letter I’d sent. He’d tossed it onto his cluttered dining room table, unopened. The rest weren’t anywhere inside his apartment. I assume he threw them away.”
“He didn’t see the treasure he had in you.”
Elrik needed to stop doing this, telling me I had worth when I wasn’t sure I agreed.
“When Grannie Rose offered to finish raising me,” I said. “I had to make sure she didn’t regret it. I tried to remain quiet, to stay out of her way, to do everything I could to make sure she didn’t reject me too.”
“She loves you. You must see that.”
I actually smiled. “I do. She does love me, and do you know what that means to me? I’ll do anything I can to keep her from shoving me away.”
“Anything.”
“That’s right.” Tears streamed down my face. “That’s why, when I got that nasty letter with the picture, I was very tempted to take all the money I’d saved from the bank and put it in an envelope, then leave it for the blackmailer.”
“What?” he snarled, crouching while looking around as if a villain carrying a knife was racing toward us.
There was no one here, not yet. I could see the box from where I stood, though I doubted anyone waiting in the trees could see me since I was hidden in the shade of the building.
“Someone took pictures of us at the beach,” I said. “Of me sucking your cock. They said they have others. I’msure there’s one of me riding you like a rodeo queen in a back alley behind a cowboy dive bar.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
I spilled it all out; there was no reason to hold it back. I’d bared myself to him, and the raw open wounds of my childhood still bled. But I’d planned to tell him about this when I saw him with his ex.
He cupped my face and tipped my head back, making my gaze meet his. What I saw there . . . It humbled me. Stunned me all over again. And it made me start crying.
“I adore you. I always will.” His eyes sparkled with tears. “I hate what those who should’ve unconditionally loved you did to you. If I could, I’d go back and time and fix it for you. I’d take on your burdens. I’d hold your hand and tell you how wonderful you are. I’d make sure you knew right from the start that I’ll love you every single day of our lives. I can’t do that, but there’s one thing I can do. I can share your burdens now. I can hold your hand and tell you that you’re incredibly special. And I can tell you I love you the moment you wake up in the morning, plus a thousand times during the day.”
He swallowed hard. “If you’ll let me. I don’t want to add another burden to those you already carry, so if you don’t think you’ll ever feel the same, if you don’t want this from me, you need to tell me right now, and I’ll back away. I’ll still support you, but I’ll do it from afar.” Frowning, he cleared his throat. “Not in a stalkerish way either. Just as a friend. I want you happy and if being alone or without me in your life is what brings you joy, I’ll support you in that too.”
I couldn’t breathe, but oh, how I could smile. “I wantall that, Elrik. I want you, because I’m in love with you too.”
His mouth seared across mine in a kiss so sweet it made tears sting the backs of my eyes. He lifted his head too quickly. “I want to take you to my home or yours and love you all day long. I want to make you dinner and hold you. I want to sit on your little deck while the sun goes down. Walk along the shore, kicking at the waves, then take you to our bench again and shout out to the world that you’re mine and that loving each other is nothing to be ashamed of.”
A scowl chased away the joy on his face. “But first, we need to catch a blackmailer.”
32
ELRIK
