AllFreeNovel
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“Let me guess. Your boss?”
“Possibly. I won’t know until I answer.” That means yes.
“You need to quit,” I tell her for the thousandth time.
“You need to get to planning a wedding,” she counters.
“Wedding?” Oakley exclaims.
“Yup! I have a Pinterest board all set up for you. Okay, gotta go!” She hangs up before either of us can say anything else.
I place my phone on the coffee table, then turn to Oakley. She still looks like she’s in shock. I gently grip her chin, tilting her head, so we’re eye to eye. Tears gather and fall down her round cheeks, and I wipe them away with my thumb.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
“Nothing,” she says with a sniffle.
“Somehow, I find that hard to believe,” I tell her, wiping away more tears.
“I… we could have been together, you know?”
“I do,” I whisper, resting my forehead on hers. “But we’re here now. And Clara is happy for us. Let’s not waste another second regretting the past, okay?” My girl nods her head. “All that matters is that I’m your future.”
“And I’m yours,” she whispers.
“Damn right you are,” I grunt, finally claiming her lips the way I’ve wanted to since the last time I kissed her.
Oakley curls up against my chest when we break for air, and I wrap my arms around her, keeping her close. This woman is every fucking thing to me, and I can’t wait for the rest of our lives.
ELEVEN
Oakley
“We don’t haveto do this,” Kai tells me as we sit outside my childhood home.
We’ve been parked in the driveway for five minutes while I try to work up the nerve to go inside and confront my parents about what they did. I’ve been trying to think about what to say to them, but I’ve got nothing.
How do I even broach the subject? I couldn’t even talk to them about my big ideas when I got home from college, and now, I’m going to have to ask them why they sold my childhood home and the farm. Add in that I’m freaking furious with them, and there’s no way that this is going to go well.
I wring my hands in my lap, then clench them into fists, fighting back the urge to run away or tell Kai to turn around and take me back to his place. My mind is spinning with a million different thoughts, making me lightheaded.
I try taking a deep breath, but it gets caught behind the lump in my throat. My chest heaves with shallow breaths, and Kai rubs my back, anchoring me once again.
“We can come back next week or something. You’ve been through a lot of emotional stuff the last few days.”
“I want to do this. I feel like I need to. For closure or whatever.”
“Okay,” Kai says, nodding patiently. “I’ll support you one hundred percent. You know that, right?”
Nodding my head, I grab his hand, squeezing the life out of it. He squeezes my right back, then lifts my hand to his mouth, pressing the softest kiss to my knuckles.
“I love you,” he murmurs.
“I love you, too.”
Kai smiles at me, and I take a deep breath before opening the door. Kai meets me on the other side of the car, taking my hand as we walk up to the front door.
I take a deep breath, staring at the gaudy double doors with golden trim.
