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“What others? I never see them when I’m with you, even if you’re not beside me Cee. I honestly don’t remember people coming up to me half the time, especially not other girls.”
“You really mean that don’t you?” she asked seeing the truth behind his words. “This attention isn’t just because…”
“No, it’s not baby, it’s probably a little more obvious to everyone else but tell me this, when those other women were draping themselves all over me who was I usually talking to or about?”
“Football,” she laughed.
“Wrong Cee, it was always you, with you, about you—when I wasn’t with you, I wanted to be.”
“Maybe next time you’ll remember that.”
“What next time? This is that time Cee; I’mnotleaving you again. I am all in—in fact,” he said cupping her cheek as he brought her gaze fully up to him. “Will you marry me, Cee?”
“Jake, you don’t mean that.”
“I do baby. I would have marched you down to city hall the morning after Miles and Emma’s wedding if it’d been open. I love you and I don’t care who knows it. I want the entire world to know it, marry me baby.”
Her breathing grew harder around the lump in her throat. She desperately wanted to say yes but with everything going on this wasn’t the time to do it. “Jake, I can’t.”
“Why not,” he asked barely masking his control on his feelings. “Why can’t you just admit that you love me still—again, whichever it is, because I’ve never stopped loving you? I have never betrayedyou.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, but I can’t say yes right now, not with them out there. If I say yes, they’ll come after you to get to me.”
“You’re trying to protect me by refusing to marry me? That’s insane Cee.”
“No, it’s not Jake. Look at it from my perspective, if I say yes to you the public finds out and then it’ll be reported that the NFL QB who requested a trade to the underdog team did so for his fiancée. That happens and they find out and they’ll come directly after you because to them you’re stealing me away.”
“I can take care of myself Cee—I can.”
“I know you can if it’s a fair fight but up against a bomb,” she whispered into his ear not wanting security to come after them for using the b word in the airport, “it’s not fair. I cannot lose someone else that I care about Jake.”
“Someone else…is this about the mystery man?” he questioned staring into her eyes.
“No, it’s about me not wanting my heart to be ripped to shreds if something happens to you. I barely handled losing my mom, pushing you away was supposed to protect me but now that you’re back…”
“Ah baby, if you’d have just told me what you were worried about back then we’d be celebrating our twelve-year anniversary in a few months.”
“I thought you knew but that you just didn’t care enough, no one else ever did.”
“This is about your father, isn’t it? Cee, it’s his loss baby. If he wasn’t smart enough to see you were the best thing in the world to ever happen to him that’s his fault not yours. Stop letting him destroy you because of something he did twenty-seven years ago.”
“I can’t help it Jake, do you know how much it hurts to know he didn’t want me but less than two years later he starts a new family?”
“What are you talking about Cee?”
“I found him, about two months after I got there. He left me and Mom, and went straight to a new woman, got her pregnant and had a baby girl he stayed with.”
“You have a half-sister?”
“Three of them and two brothers,” she said telling him the one thing only Lucca knew.
“And they were all with one woman?”
“Yup, he settled down with them in the middle of Kansas, been there ever since.”
“Ah baby, that doesn’t mean no one cares about you, whatever reason behind him leaving is his issue not yours. You are brilliant, beautiful, breathtaking, and beyond words baby. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you. I broke up with Zoe to try and meet you, be with you.”
“Yet you went back to her after I left.”
