“I want to be with you,” I promise him. “I want to walk hand-in-hand down Main Street without worrying who’s watching, or what they’re thinking. I want to officially introduce you to my family, this time as my boyfriend.” I swallow past the lump in my throat, wondering exactly how many cards is too many to lay on the proverbial table. “I want you today, tomorrow and seventy years from now, if you’ll still have me then. I want to get you the dog you’ve always wanted, and I want to create a tiny person who’s half me, and half you. If that’s something you want,” I hastily add, realizing we’ve never discussed children before now.
“I do,” Declan assures me. “God, Elsie, I want that so badly.”
I smile at the eager, earnest way he loves me. “When we’re old and wrinkled and gray, sitting in our matching rocking chairs on a front porch somewhere in this town, I want to look back on all of the years between then and right now, and know that I didn’t waste a single minute that I could have spent with you.”
Declan snakes an arm around my waist and tugs me close, kissing me deeply. I can’t help the way I sigh happily against his lips when his tongue meets mine.
When he pulls back slightly, he’s grinning. “I’m not going to ask you to marry me right now, because you’re in the middle of your work day, and we have an audience, and we’ve only been an official couple for about five minutes, and that would be insane,” Declan says, though he raises his eyebrows like he’s challenging me to disagree. “Right?”
“Absolutely certifiable,” I agree, ignoring the fleeting, foolish pang of disappointment.
“I am going to marry you so hard someday, Elsie Carmichael,” he vows.
Our audience has apparently grown tired of being silent observers, because they all start to clap and cheer. It’s not until I glance over Declan’s shoulder and take a good look around us that I realize our audience has quadrupled in size. At some point, the tattoo and piercing crew slipped through the door along with their customers, and several people out on the sidewalk are peering curiously through the front windows. Noah holds his phone out in front of him, where four little squares on his screen show Ty, Grace, Olivia and Cam on Facetime. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but I hear a screech that’s unmistakably Grace.
“Bet you never pictured this when I was cursing you out for stealing my parking spot,” I joke.
Declan’s mouth quirks up into my favorite cocky smirk. “Honey, I’ve been picturing you being mine since exactly that moment.” He leans close, his lips hovering near my ear as if he’s about to tell me a secret. “Even when you called memotherfuckerwith your window rolled down and probably thought I couldn’t hear.”
My cheeks heat at the memory. I most definitely didnotrealize he could hear that.
“And yet, you still fell in love with me anyway,” I muse.
Declan rakes his eyes over me from the top of my messy-haired head to the tips of my sneakered toes, the same way he did that first time we met – though there’s an undeniable softness in his gaze now. When he leans in again and places his lips to my forehead, I nearly melt to the tiled floor.
“I never stood a chance.”
CHAPTER 51
Declan
Three Days Ago
“Don’t give me that look.” It could be my imagination, but I’d swear Sean pushes the needle in just alittleharder than necessary, just for a second.
“You’re going to fucking bolt again?” he accuses. His eyes are trained on the spot on my chest he’s tattooing, but the angry slash of his eyebrows is unmistakable. “After everything you just said, after everything you’ve built here, you’re just going to up and leave?”
“I didn’t –”
“Forget me,” Sean cuts in. “Forget the shop, and the fact that we’ve got a good thing going here. Youloveher. I know you do, so don’t fucking deny it.”
“I didn’t say –”
“You love her, and you’re still going to walk away? Just like that?”
“Will you quit being a judgmental prick for five seconds so I cantalk?” I yell.
Sean lifts his machine and sits back in his chair, glaring at me. The silence in the shop when he takes his foot off the pedal is deafening.
“Talk then,” he barks at me.
“Sean,” Frankie chides. “Be nice.” But when I look over, I note the way she glares at me, too. When she notices me looking, she just raises an eyebrow.
Well?that look says.Explain yourself.
“I received a job offer,” I confess. “From a shop down in New York. My old boss split from her partner and opened her own place, and a buddy of mine followed her. They’ve got a booth to fill.”
“Fucking christ,” Sean mutters.
