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I grab a lock of her hair to twirl around one finger. “I shouldn’t have let you go.”
“Let me go where?”
“Last year. I shouldn’t have let you go.” I smooth her hair, tucking the stray lock behind one ear. It quickly falls out. “I believed you when you said you were dating someone else, and that was dumb of me. I wanted to respect your wishes and won’t make that mistake again.”
Her laugh is quiet and sweet. “You won’t respect my wishes.”
“Not if it means another man, no. I should have ignored everything you said. We’d be better off if I had.”
“How so?”
Her surprise at my statement surprises me. “We’d be engaged by now.” Sarah gasps my name, so I grab her waist to pull her even closer. “You know we would be. I shouldn’t have let you walk away. I won’t do it again. Know that.”
“Boone and Maddie are engaged. They announced it last week,” she tells me.
My lips twist sourly. “I would have proposed earlier than him. He should have done it months ago.”
“Jake, are you in a hypothetical competition over imaginary proposals with my brother?”
I smile at her. “We’ll have kids first.”
Her lips part with genuine shock. “I can’t tell if you’re serious. It’s a serious topic, but you have that smile.”
“What smile?”
She points at my lips. “You’re doing it again. We’ll be in the middle of a conversation, and you’ll smile.”
“That’s because I enjoy being with you. It’s good you agree on having kids first; it’s one less problem for us to solve.”
Sarah climbs over me so she straddles my hips. It’s an effort to gain some control rather than any effort to flirt. “Please don’t joke.”
“There’s no joking. I’m being honest with you.”
She stares down at me. Her expression is the same as she wore while straddling me on the chair.
She accused me of being cocky, and perhaps I am sometimes. I’m good at what I do, and I discovered a big trick in life is to project confidence, no matter the challenge. People will believe it, and often, you can convince yourself to believe it, too.
The silence between us stretches out so long that I ask, “How can I convince you?”
Sarah merely shakes her head and lays back down beside me. “Everything you’ve said means we go public.”
“No more hiding. You and me.”
Sarah struggled to trust me, which I didn’t understand the first time. She insisted on being casual, and I played along, not realizing she was protecting herself. I mistakenly gave her what she wanted; all it did was break our hearts.
“You and Boone will need to make peace.”
“I already planned to tell him about us.”
“I should do it,” she says. That doesn’t sit well with me.
Boone will want to get some hits in, and I’ll take them. He’s earned it. “Together, then. We can figure out the timing later.”
“You promised, Jake,” Sarah says, and I don’t know whether that’s a plea, a threat, or something else. There’s no mistakingher vulnerability.
My throat tightens, and I swallow. “I haven’t forgotten.”
I promised to protect her heart, and I’ll keep it.
