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Everybody will be here in a couple of hours, nothing can go wrong. I hurry across the sandy parking lot and cut across the wide sandstone walkway to the restaurant’s Big Leaf lined path. I shouldn’t have let him convince me to go this morning. I should have been there, making sure nothing went wrong.
Fairy lights twinkle in the shade of the trees, draped from one side to the other like a glittering spider web of tiny white lights. Colored glass lanterns hang from branches. We set them before I left so that everything was good to go. It doesn’t calm my nerves. Not even a little bit. I don’t wantcome nowissues. Not tonight. Ican’thavecome nowissues, my mom is coming.
My dress flares out behind me. A black maxi with spaghetti straps and tiny buttons down the front, open from the thigh. It was the first I tried on. I had four more to try, I don’t even know if I like it. Tonight was supposed to be perfect. This does not feel perfect.
I pause when I get to the massive raw iron gates we installed yesterday. I try the handle. It pushes open.
I don’t see smoke. That’s got to be a good sign. My nerves loosen their grip a fraction. But I barely stop to question the fact that someone has already dressed the tables in the garden with runners made from Rosa’s fabric and a glass candle on each.
I rush up the mosaic path not stopping until I reach the open double doors.
My brain takes a couple of seconds to compute what I’m seeing. I cover my mouth, my bracelets jingling on my wrist.
Mylo straightens from where he’s polishing the pale wood bar top, and my heart does a flip so big it’s almost painful.My bar.
Black button down, rolled at the sleeves and open at the neck, dark gray slacks, hair pulled back in a tidier than usual version of his man bun, he twists a cloth between his hands as I approach. “Surprise.”
My mouth drops open, the gravel to his voice tickling over my skin, the sight of him here almost enough to make my eyes sting. “You… you did all this?” I turn to the open doors. “This was what you had to take care of today? This was Si’scome nowissue?” Heart still thumping in my chest, I cross the room to where he’s standing and smooth my hand along the curved edge of the bar top. “Cluan jacaranda.” Blinking up into his handsome face I shake my head. “But I ordered pine.” I can barely believe he’s giving me this, his time, his now, his self. It’s more than anyone’s ever given me.
He nods, his gaze moving over my face. “I’ve been working on them in the back of the Surf Shack after my classes.”
“Them?” I ask, my smile widening. “The roof terrace too? Mylo, this is too much—”
“You deserve the best, Kenz, and it was in my power to give you it.” He says it so simply, so easily, like it’s no big deal. But it is. It’s a huge deal, and it just proves what he’s been showing me since he decided he was in this—with me—for real. That he cares. That he just wants me to be happy. That should be enough. I need tomakeit be enough. More than that, Iwantto make it enough.
His past doesn’t affect me, his now does.
“Thank you. I don’t know how…” I chew on my lip and press my hands to his stomach, the buttons of his shirt and the heat of his body against my palms. “To thank you for this.”
“You just did.” A smile tickles at the corners of his lips. “You’re welcome.”
I fill my chest with the slight spice of his aftershave and clean scent that’s all him, then lean into him, lift onto my toes and press my lips to the skin just below his ear. “Please tell me we’re alone.”
His deep chuckle lifts the hairs on my arms and tightens every single muscle in my body. “We’re alone. Simon’s gone home for a shower. Why?” He drops his hands to my waist, his touch warm through my dress.
“Because I want to christenmyrestaurant withmyman before he comes back.” I kiss his smiling mouth and smooth my hands down his abs to his belt buckle.
“Really?” His voice is an amused rumble as he dips his head and kisses me back, an easy, deep, toe-curling kiss that has my hands lifting to cup his face and my whole body bowing into him, focusing on this moment only, on how good it feels, how goodhefeels. “Tell me more.”
“Well…” I slip my hand down between our bodies and smooth my palm over the growing hardness beneath the thick cotton of his slacks.“It involves you turning me around and lifting my dress…”
“I love the way you think.” He kisses my nose, then spins me around.
My hands flatten onto the worktop behind the bar with a giggle when his teeth graze the side of my neck, big body sinking down to lift the hem of my dress until the only thing standing between me and his extremely hard cock is his slacks and my teeny tiny lace panties.
“I love you.” The words fall out, straightening the smile from my face. We haven’t talked about him saying it in the shower the other day or the fact that I didn’t say it back. He hasn’t pushed or questioned it, but he also hasn’t said it again. I’ve been so wrapped up in the mysteries of his past and all of the things he won’t tell me I couldn’t see the one truth he never stops showing me. I don’t need to know all of him to know that I love him. More than that, I trust him.
I’m spun back around and lifted onto the worktop before any other confessions have the chance to fall out. “I…” I trail off.
His eyebrows are knitted, the corner of his mouth lifting, lips parted, gaze flitting from my left eye to my right. “Again.” His thumbs brush along the sides of my jaw. “Say it again.”
Now we’re both grinning. “I love you.”
“I love everything about you.” His lips are on mine before I can get a breath out, but not before the niggling doubt tries to weasel it’s way in again.
He can love everything about you because he knows everything about you.
I force it down and throw myself into enjoying the now, his past can’t affect me if I don’t let it, so I’m choosing not to let it. “We should lock the door.” I sink my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, arching my back to get closer, hitching my knees up his sides, the split in my dress giving him easy access to exactly where I want him.
