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She turned away and stared, hot-eyed, at the plasterboard. Three months of pent up hurt and confusion was bottlenecked inside her. The grief, the abandonment, the piercing loneliness. She couldn’t bear it.
“Why?” she burst out. “Why are you here, after all this time? What changed your mind? Did you have a goddamn vision? Or what?”
He lifted his head, but she didn’t dare meet his eyes. She couldn’t let him hypnotize her. She had to stay sharp.
“I guess I did,” he said quietly. “I went up to the mountains. I realized a couple of things up there. One, if I can’t trust my own self, I might as well be dead. Two, I don’t want to die. Three, if I’m going to live, I have to have you. Because my life isn’t worth a handful of shit without you.”
“Oh. Really.” A teary giggle shook her. “Such poetic eloquence.”
“You inspire me, babe.”
She wiped her eyes on her sleeves. He shoved a tissue into her hand. He turned her face ’til she was looking into his somber eyes.
“I haven’t had one of those episodes since then,” he said quietly. “Which isn’t to say that it won’t happen again. I got messed up pretty bad. But I think—I hope, anyway—that the worst is behind me. So you decide, Liv. If you want to risk it, that is. I can’t wait around until I feel like I’m good enough for you. Because I never will be.”
“Oh, shut up.” She tried to wiggle free, but he was having none of that. His embrace just tightened. She sniffled angrily into the tissue. “That’s insulting and ridiculous. I never expected you to be perfect. But I can’t be with a man who shuts me out whenever the going gets rough.”
His face tightened. “I’m sorry. I promise you I won’t do it to you, ever again. Before God, my parents’ graves, my sacred honor.” He hesitated. “Such as it is.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your sacred honor,” she snapped. “It’s your lack of plain common sense that bugs me.”
He muffled his laughter against her chest, and peeked up at her, sidewise. “Uh, well. Like I said,” he ventured. “I’m not perfect. Not even close. But I do have my strong points. And I promise to do my best.”
He waited for her to answer. She couldn’t. She shook with conflicting emotions. Anger, doubt…and a wild, crazy hope.
Her voice was locked in her throat. She could hardly breathe.
Sean groped behind himself for the thick, fleece lined leather coat, and pulled something from the pocket. He held out a tiny velvet box.
She stared at it stupidly. Sean made an impatient sound, grabbed her hand, closed her fingers around it. “Open it,” he urged. “Please.”
She flipped it open, and stared at the ring inside. Mouth agape.
The white gold ring seemed to flash and pulse against the black velvet backdrop. A diamond glittered, slightly off center, and around it, a ruby, an emerald and a sapphire were mounted in a sensual, geometrical setting that looked somehow both modern and ancient.
It was a stunning piece.
“I thought I should use the same diamond,” he said hesitantly. “But I thought I’d jazz it up, give it some color. Make something fresh and new out of it. I hope that you…” His voice trailed off.
She struggled to speak, tried again. “Did Tam make this?”
He nodded. “She said to tell you that if you were foolish enough to give in to my bullshit, that she wanted to be your maid of honor,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “It’s becoming a sort of a family tradition.”
She covered her trembling mouth, still staring at the ring. “She’s a little ahead of the game, isn’t she?”
He shook his head slowly. “More like about fifteen years behind.”
She gulped. He took the hand that held the ring box, and gave it a slow, reverent kiss. “I want to make love to you,” he said softly.
“I know,” she whispered.
“But I don’t want to be kicked out on my ass afterwards,” he said. “Can I tell you how I want it to be? My wildest, craziest fantasy?”
She shrugged. “Nobody’s stopping you,” she muttered.
His eyes gleamed. “I want to slip that ring on your finger,” he began. “I want to crawl up on that couch on top of you, and very slowly, push my cock into that tight, red hot pussy. I want to stare deep into your eyes and kiss you while I make sweet, slow love to you. For hours. Make you come `til you’re just glowing. Beaming. Shining.”
She looked away, pink. “That much, I could have guessed.”
