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I take the little box in my hand and open it up. A diamond ring shines up at me and I don’t doubt this is the one that Spencer has proposed with four times now. I feel Tully’s eye burning into the back of my head and I can’t help but wonder what things would be like if I never went away.
Maybe my ring would be on her finger and maybe that heaviness inside her heart would never have existed. But then, maybe that darkness would still be inside me and I would have ended up hurting her anyway.
The only blessing I can find in all of this is that Spencer’s ring is not taking up residence on her finger. For now, it lives discarded in this little box and that’s exactly where it’s going to stay until Spencer can find someone else to give it to.
I take the ring from the box before turning and walking towards Tully. Her eyes widen and she sinks away as I stalk her. I toss the empty box onto the bed as I pass before situating myself right before her and staring down into those beautiful, mesmerizing eyes.
I reach over and take her hand before placing the ring in the center of her palm and curling her fingers around it. “If you were truly his, if you’d have given your heart to him, then I’d let you go. But you haven’t. You’re mine, Tully. You always will be just as I’ll always be yours. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to make this right.”
Tully steps into me, raising her chin and looking up into my eyes just as she used to. Her hand presses against my chest and she melts into me as I take her waist. “You see that’s where you’re wrong,” she whispers. “I don’t know if I’m his but what I do know is that I’m sure as hell not yours. I’ll never go back to you, Rivers.”
Her words are supposed to cut, but the fight within her has a smile ripping across my face. I pull her in closer to my chest as confusion has her brows dipping low. “God, I fucking missed you.”
She fights against me for a moment before realizing she has no hope of me letting her go and then finally wraps her arms around me. I tilt my face into her hair and breathe her in as she finds comfort in my hold. “I was serious,” she murmurs into my chest. “I’m making it work with Spence.”
“You don’t really believe that, Tully. You’ve had three years to make it work with him. He’s been down on one knee four times and asked you to move in with him. If you wanted to make it work, you’d be married with a kid on the way. If you were in love with him, you would have thrown yourself into it just like you did with me, but you haven’t. You’ve been waiting, biding your time in case I was to come back to you.”
“You’re setting yourself up for disappointment.”
I shake my head as I pull back and look down at her. “No,” I tell her, pausing to know she’s truly hearing every damn word that I’m saying. “I’m setting myself up for the most important fight of my life. So, understand this, baby. I’m all in.”
Her eyes widen just a fraction and before she can fight me on it, I lean back in and press a kiss to her cheek.
A breath escapes her and before I push her too far, I walk away.
Noah might think she’s a fragile little butterfly and at the wedding, I might have thought the same thing, but that fierce look in her eye that tells me she wants nothing more than to castrate me, says that tiger still lives within her and it’s getting ready to break free.
Chapter 7
Tully
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.
What was I thinking letting him through the door? I stood on the other side of it, listening to the way his head fell against the hard wood. I could hear a rapid heartbeat and I’m still not sure if it was mine or his. All I know is that it’s been three days and I still can’t get him out of my head.
The words he was saying…they were the ones I’ve heard every single night in my dreams when I should be dreaming of someone else.
I’m in big fucking trouble here.
I tried to be strong. I tried to hold him off and throw as much attitude as I could find at his face and it seemed the harder I tried, the more he liked it. It was almost as though, for the shortest moment, that I had found my old fire. The one I lost when I lost him.
Rivers says he wants me back and the fire in his eyes tells me he means it and that scares the shit out of me. It’s one thing dealing with the loss of Spencer from my life, but fearing that Rivers could play with my heart all over again, well, that’s something that I couldn’t possibly bear.
