Page 128 of Vow

She smiled slyly. “Noted. What was that you said to John, anyway? He kind of looked at me funny.”

Andino chuckled. “Did he?”

“I mean … a little.”

“I think I shocked him a bit, that’s all.”

“By bringing me here, you mean?”

“No,” Andino murmured, slipping a hand into his pocket to bring out an item he’d been keeping hidden. Haven glanced down between them just as he started to lower down on one knee, and he offered the velvet box in his hand like a prize for her to take. “Because I told him that I wanted him to meet the woman I intend to marry.”

Haven blinked, and her pretty pink lips fell open as she whispered, “Oh.”

“I know it’s a strange time, and maybe this isn’t the best place. That’s the thing, though—I don’t give a damn about any of that. The only thing I care about is you. Look at all the things I did just to have you, and keep you, Haven. I’m so tired of waiting. I don’t want to wait to do what I should have done from the start.”

“And what is that?” she asked.

Andino smiled crookedly. “Vow to love you … forever. To always put you first, and to make sure you never feel like an afterthought in my life. How could you be an afterthought when you’re the first thing on my mind in the morning, and the last thing at night? I will give you the world if you ask me for it, I promise. I will give you everything … if you just marry me.”

She pressed her lips together, and glanced away. Andino didn’t miss the wetness clouding her eyes, though, even if she did try to hide the tears. “And you’ll keep those vows?”

“Until you no longer want me to.”

“I will always want you to, Andino.”

“Say yes,” he murmured.

Haven looked back at him, but he was already standing because he knew her answer before it could slip from her lips. How could she refuse him—she loved him. Every horrible, good, and gray part of him that scared her, loved her, and wanted her forever.

Andino had hurt her, and he’d done things that he knew he would spend the rest of his life making up for. He was willing to do that, though. He was willing to grovel every morning, and crawl through broken glass just to please this woman as long as she was waiting there at the end for him, and she still wanted him.

He would do all of that for her.

She’d brought out the very worst and the utter best of who he was, who he could be, and who he would be. He would not be half the man he could be in ten years if this woman was not standing by his side.

And she knew all of this.

All those parts of him …

They were hers.

Softly, she whispered, “Yes.”

EPILOGUE

“Let him have his moment, okay?”

Andino glanced over at her as they came to a stop at the front door of a quaint Florida beach house. “Pardon?”

“My dad,” she said, laughing a bit. “Just … he might try to size you up, or something. Let him have his moment. I know he won’t actually scare you, but would it hurt to let him think it did?”

He raised a brow at her, and Haven wanted to laugh at the amusement dancing in his eyes. “But this does scare me. I don’t have to fucking pretend.”

That was not the reply she had been expecting from him.

“Why would this scare you?”

“Meeting your parents at the same time we’re going to tell them we’re getting married in a couple of weeks?” Andino made an anxious noise, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Also, if you missed the memo, I didn’t have relationships. I don’t know how to do the whole meet the parents thing, Haven.”