Page 227 of Hard Pass

His eyes shock wide. “What? No. How—”

“Because that would be rude to haul me all the way here and strand me with some hot islander so I could live off the grid and drink coconuts all day while skinny-dipping.”

His grin is a slow crawl on his lips. “You’re being ridiculous. I am not breaking up with you.”

“Whew,” I say dramatically.

His laugh is rough this time with emotion tingeing the edges. But it’s when his hand slides into the pocket of his board shorts, my heart stops.

Completely.

“Cole.”

“You know, I used to think love was something only other people got to share,” he says quietly.

Every sarcastic thought in my head disappears. What is happening right now?

His eyes stay locked on mine, but I can sense how damn nervous he is.

Now I am too.

“It was something I watched from the outside. Something I didn’t understand because every version of it I knew came with strings attached. I feared I wouldn’t know how to love someone because I never saw that in my parents’ marriage.” He reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “I spent a lot of my life jealous of people who had it. Real love. Safe love. The selfless love where somebody stays when things get messy.” He pauses. “Then you happened.”

My tear slips free before I can stop it. He catches it with his thumb and then kisses the track it made on my cheek.

“And now?” he asks as he leans back, voice gruff.

He pulls a ring box from his pocket.

My hand flies to my mouth.

“Now it’s not enough just to have it. I need it. Need you. Want you.” He smiles. “Even when you drive me absolutely fucking insane.”

A broken laugh slips through my tears. He smiles but his eyes are glassy.

“Love is more than a word to me now. It’s need and want and choice. It’s you giving me hell when I deserve it and holding on when I don’t know how to ask. It’s waking up beside you, Dublin, and knowing I don’t have to earn the right to stay.” He looks down at me linking my fingers with his free hand. “It’s meeting a random girl in Cabo and knowing she’ll always stick with you in some way . . . even when you have no idea how much.”

He opens the box and my breath catches on a sob at the sparkling diamond. It’s gorgeous but no more so than the man in front of me.

“I want that for the rest of my life. I want you to live it with me. To feel it with me. To fight for it with me.”

He drops to one knee. Barefoot. The sunset’s glorious behind him, the stunning ring’s waiting for my hand, and his tremendous heart’s open and exposed in a way I don’t think he’s ever given to anyone else before.

Because this man once built himself on control. On performance. On surviving pressure.

And now he’s here before me with a nervous smile and a vulnerability that owns me.

“Dublin Locke,” he says, voice shaking. That undoes me completely. “Will you marry me?”

For one impossible second, I can’t speak. Not because I don’t know the answer but because the answer is so big it steals every word I’ve ever trusted.

It’s every late-night conversation. Every fight we’ve survived. Every fear we walked through. Every moment he looked at me and chose trust over the instinct he’s learned his whole life—to shut down. To not speak up for himself.

It’s him.

I can’t remember a time when it hasn’t been.

Cole’s expression shifts. “Trouble?”