Page 96 of Trade It All

Her brows lift. “What?”

“It can stay like this forever.” My pulse is pounding now. Hard. Fast. But there is not one ounce of uncertainty in me.

“Marry me.”

She goes still in my arms. Completely still. Those big eyes blink up at me, lips parting like she forgot how to use them, and for one glorious half second I feel like the smartest man alive.

Then my own words catch up to me.

Marry me.Jesus Christ.

I just proposed to the woman I love in a Vegas hotel room while wearing a t-shirt and basketball shorts with no ring, no speech, no plan, and absolutely nothing remotely worthy of her.

“Fuck,” I mutter, dropping my forehead to hers before pulling back and dragging both hands down my face. “No. Nope. Don’t answer that.”

Her brows pull together, a laugh already threatening in her throat. “Dean—”

I release her completely and start pacing in front of the windows, pointing at her as I go because now that I’ve realized what I did, I cannot stop the spiral.

“I’m serious. Do not answer me right now.”

She folds her arms, watching me with entirely too much amusement for a woman who was just proposed to. “You are unbelievable.”

“No, what I am is an idiot,” I tell her, turning back toward her. “You deserve something thoughtful. Something romantic. Something with a ring and candles and me not sounding like I blacked out and accidentally asked you to spend forever with me.”

Her laugh breaks free then, warm and bright, and somehow that only makes me more irritated with myself.

I gesture helplessly around the room. “This is not a proposal. This is me having an emotional breakdown in front of a window.”

She bites her lip.

I keep going because I apparently cannot shut up once I start. “You deserve dramatic, Maddie. You deserve planned out. You deserve me getting down on one knee somewhere that isn’t a hotel suite I bullied management into adjoining because I’m too obsessed to sleep a hallway away from you.”

That does it. She full-on laughs. Actually laughs at me.

I stop pacing and stare at her. “This isn’t funny.”

“It kind of is.”

“It absolutely is not.”

She walks toward me then, still smiling.

Slowly. Like she has all the time in the world. Like she isn’t holding my entire life in the answer she still hasn’t given me. I stand there, breathing too hard, while she closes the distance and places both palms flat against my chest.

“You done?” she asks softly.

“No.”

She grins. “Too bad.”

“Maddie—” She rises onto her toes and kisses me. Not a quick peck. Not a playful interruption. A slow, quiet kiss that steals every frantic thought right out of my head.

When she pulls back, her nose brushes mine. “Yes.”

I blink. My hands automatically come to her waist. “Yes what?”

Her smile turns impossibly softer. “Yes, Dean.”