Page 90 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

He looks at me for a long moment.

Then Owen Peterson, ten weeks of hardware in his leg, goes down.

"Owen—"

"Hang on." He grimaces the whole way, gripping the bed frame, breath hissing through his teeth. "This is happening. It's happening slow, but it's happening."

"Your leg, you lunatic, get up—"

"Nellie." He's down. One knee on the brown roses, jaw tight, eyes blazing up at me. No ring. He holds up the ultrasound instead, that little gray storm with our whole future in it, right at the level of my hands.

"Then marry me first," he says. "So there's never one second where you were anything less than my whole life."

Chapter twenty-seven

Ask Me Again in Willowbend

NELLIE

Owen Peterson is down on one knee on a motel carpet the color of dried mud, soot in his hairline, holding a picture of our baby instead of a ring.

And I can't say yes.

Not here. Not in room 6 of the Lakeview Motor Lodge with the ice machine rattling through the wall like it's got opinions.

"Ask me again in Willowbend," I say.

His face goes still. Careful. A man bracing for the door again.

"Home," I say.

That word lands on him like water on a burn. He hears it. He hears everything inside it, because his eyes go bright and his jaw works once and he says, rough, "Say that again."

"Home, Owen."

I pull him up off that carpet by both hands. He comes up wincing, hardware and all, and then his hands are in my hair and his mouth is on mine and I am done pretending I ever had a rule worth keeping.

The first time, four weeks ago, was a dam breaking.

This is a vow.

He walks me backward to the bed slow, like we've got all the time in the world, because for the first time we do. He peels the flannel off my shoulders and folds it over the chair. Folds it. I laugh through my tears.

"You're folding laundry right now."

"That shirt's been through a lot." His mouth finds my throat. "Show some respect."

I pull his shirt over his head and there's still smoke in the cotton, still soot in the creases of his knuckles, and I press my lips to the scar on his shoulder blade because I know its story now. I know all his stories now.

He shivers under my mouth. This big, unmovable man. Shivers.

"Nellie."

"Right here."

He undresses me like he's unwrapping something breakable, one button at a time, and I let him, and that's the part that undoes me. Not the heat. The letting. Every inch of skin he uncovers, he kisses first. Collarbone. Shoulder. The curve of my breast, where he slows down and takes his sweet time, tongue and teeth and that low hum in his chest, until I'm arching off the bed and gripping the quilt.

He gets my jeans off and kneels back on his heels and looks at me. All of me. Lamplight on, nothing hidden.