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That was it.
There was nothing else I could do.
I had no other choice in the matter.
I cried.Chapter 19Why can’t a bicycle stand up by itself? Because it’s two-tired.
-Text from Hoax to Pru
Hoax
She was still crying as I carried her into her home. Big, bone-wracking sobs that hurt my fuckin’ heart.
After saying goodbye to Sam, and promising that we’d be attending the family dinner at the Mexican food joint they loved later that night, we’d left.
I was tired as hell.
After a thirty-eight-hour flight, two layovers, and waiting in the parking lot in the hot as hell heat for an hour with Sam, I wanted nothing more than to take a shower and go to bed.
But I also wanted to do all that with Pru.
I did not want to go out to eat.
I did not want to leave the house.
I wanted to stay in her place, for the next three days, and get reacquainted with her new body.
God, when I’d seen her in real life, walking toward me, I’d wanted nothing more than to shove her into my truck and drive like a bat out of hell to her place.
Instead, Kelley had shown his hand, and let’s just say he lost.
He didn’t know it yet, though.
He thought he was still in the clear. He thought that he was invincible.
Well, I was about to let him know very quickly that he wasn’t.
“What’s that look for?” Pru asked, running her nose along my neck.
“I had all these grand plans,” I said. “After talking with your father, and asking for permission to marry you, I was going to get down on one knee and ask you right there in the parking lot,” I told her. “But then he was waiting on you and ruined everything. I want to kick his ass so bad it’s not even funny.”
She pressed her hand against the opposite side of my throat from where her mouth was resting against my pulse. “Seeing you standing there? That was the happiest I’ve been since you left me in the airport,” she said softly. “And the way you asked me—if that could be declared as a proposal—was perfect. Having you claim me as yours in front of everyone? That was perfect. It may not be the storybook proposal, but it’s us. It’s real. It’s what I wanted.”
I looked down at her bare finger. “I didn’t give you your ring.”
She picked her head up out of my neck and stared at me with excitement lighting her eyes.
“Ring?”
I grinned.
When I landed, Bayou had been waiting for me with my truck. I’d also asked him to do me one more favor and pick a ring up for me that I’d picked out online—and let me just tell you something, ring shopping is hard as fuck online. Plus, I had to get Bayou to ask Phoebe to get Pru’s ring size. Everything was so much harder than it should have been.
But after seeing the ring that he’d placed into my hand—that had also cost me a whack seeing as I hadn’t skimped on the diamond size or the metal in the band—I’d realized it was perfect.
Setting her down on her feet, I made sure she was steady before I reached into my pocket and pulled out the ring.
Her breath stalled in her chest, and her hand came up to cover her mouth.
“Will you…”
“Fuck me!” one of the birds said from behind me.
I paused, grinning wickedly. “That, too. But I was going to say ‘will you marry me’ first. The ‘will you fuck me’ was going to come second.”
She held her hand out to me and replied, “I agree to both.”
I grinned like a goddamn lunatic.
Then I slipped the ring that cost me nearly twenty grand onto her finger and…it didn’t fit.
I stared at it, dumbfounded.
She started to laugh, taking the ring from me and working it on her finger until it was finally in place.
“So I might or might not have put on twenty-six pounds since you last saw me,” she mentioned.
I let my eyes slowly trail down her body, starting at her mouth.
Her breasts were bigger—that was a given. Oh, and her belly—which was cute as fuck.
That was the only thing that I could really see that was different about her.
But I’d have to do a more thorough inspection.
Naked.
And she must’ve seen that written in my eyes because she grinned and started walking toward me.
It was only four steps, but each step she took seemed to feel like it took her an entire year.
The moment she was close—her belly the only thing touching me—she leaned up and kissed me on the corner of my lips.
“Take me to bed, Hoax.”
I grinned. “No bed just yet,” I denied her request. “I need a shower something fierce. I haven’t had a good one since I left, and I’m fairly sure I have sand and dirt in the creases of my balls. But once I’m clean, then I’ll take you there.”
