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“Mom said he wanted me to be a pallbearer,” I say, my voice slightly muffled, but she hears me just fine.
“He left instructions?” she asks.
"He updated them a few years ago, apparently.” I sit up, her hand falling to my shoulder. “Me and my dad. Ty. Your dad and your brothers, too.”
Dana blinks. “You think they’ll do it?”
“It’s a huge honor,” I say, looking up into her eyes. “They won’t turn it down, but afterward…” I shake my head. “I don’t know what’s going to happen after that. If we’ll even speak again.”
“Do you really think they’ll shut you out for good?”
“Are they talking to you?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Not really.”
“They’ll come around,” I say with a sigh. “As long as I end it with you.”
“They said that?”
“It was implied.”
She lowers her hand. “Oh. Well… yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“We should, shouldn’t we?” she says. “End it?”
I take her hand back as it falls. “No,” I say.
Her head tilts. “Connor…”
“No,” I say, leaving a kiss on her knuckles. “I’ve wanted you for so long. Now that I have you, I’m not giving you up.”
“They’re your friends,” she argues. “My brothers.”
“My brothers, too,” I say. “They’ll get over it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“And I don’t care.” I rise off the bed, reaching out to cup her face. “I love you, Dana. If they have a problem with that — if any of them have a problem with that — I don’t care. They can fuck right off.”
I kiss her, wrapping one arm around her waist to hold her against me. She reacts with a startled gasp and parts her lips to deepen the kiss, her fingers drawing up my back and into my hair.
“I love you, too,” she whispers as she takes a breath.
The words tremble my spine, threatening to weaken my knees, but I stay standing. Somehow.
Dana Kirby loves me. Like I love her.
She tilts her head back; the kiss broken. “But…”
I study her open eyes, my heart threatening to shatter into pieces. “But?”
Dana brings her hands to my sides, but she doesn’t push me away. “I want to fix this,” she says. “We can’t be together without their blessing.”
“I don’t need their blessing.”
“I do,” she says. “And, I think, you really do, too.”
