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She chuckles. “Are you kidding? That was just a practice run.”
I climb into my truck as she gets in the passenger side. Looking over at me, she knows where we’re headed next. And maybe I shouldn’t get ahead of myself, thinking that everyone will be happy for us.
Lai smirks at me as she buckles her seatbelt. “You have a living will, right?”
Fuck.
OKAY, SO MAYBE SHEwas right. My momwasthe practice run. And it went really well. But as I sit here, staring across the couch from Laiken’s parents, I feel like there isn’t enough oxygen in this room. My hands are sweating. My collar seems too tight. There’s a good possibility that I’m choking on my own saliva right now.
Everything was going well. They were happy to see us both when we got here. But the tension started to grow the second Laiken asked if we could all sit down and talk. And now, as I look over at her, she raises her brows at me.
“This was your idea, Casanova,” she teases. “I’m just here for entertainment purposes.”
Well, she has a point. Shewascompletely on Team Vegas. She may have been onto something. A part of me wonders if it’s too late to choose differently. But I meant what I told her. I respect our mothers, and her father for that matter, way too much to marry her without them there to see it.
I breathe in deeply and let it out slowly, looking at the people who have become a second set of parents for me over the last third of my life. “Mr. and Mrs. Blanchard, I would like to marry your daughter.”
Her dad’s mouth opens and shuts multiple times as he swings between confused and outraged, while her mom puts a hand to her chest to clutch her metaphorical pearls.
“I’m going to be a grandmother?” she asks tearfully.
“No!” Laiken and I answer, urgently and in unison.
Mr. Blanchard’s face turns beet red. “You knocked up my daughter?”
“No,” Laiken stops him. “Dad. No. I’m not pregnant.”
Both her parents sigh—her father in relief and her mom out of what looks a lot like disappointment. Laiken tilts her head at her for a second before shaking it off.
“Okay,” Mr. Blanchard says. “So, what’s with the shotgun wedding?”
I sit up a little straighter. “Well, as you know, there have been some big changes in my life lately, and they revealed things to me that I didn’t even realize I wanted—the main one being your daughter, officially and permanently,” I explain. “So, with your permission, and respectfully, even without it, I plan on marrying her and making her my wife.”
“The fuck you are!” Cam’s angry voice echoes through the room.
And okay, I probably should have talked to him about this first. But I was afraid he would try to talk me out of it. Judging by his reaction right now, I think that was a pretty accurate assumption.
“Cameron!” his mom chastises. “Language!”
Cam scoffs. “No. Fuck that. It was one thing when they started dating, but I’m not going to sit around and watch him legally lock her down because he wants pussy on demand.”
“Sweet Lord,” Mrs. Blanchard says, mortified.
Meanwhile, Mr. Blanchard looks like he’s plotting my murder—and it’s going to be a violent one. “Is that true? Is that all you’re trying to get out of my little girl?”
All Laiken is lacking right now is popcorn as she rests her chin in her hands and leans toward me. “This is going well.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
“No!” I tell her dad, then turn to Cam and repeat it. “No.”
But he doesn’t want to hear it, and he storms out of the room, leaving us to clean up the mess he just made. I know that’s something I’ll need to deal with in a bit. The last thing I want is for him to be pissed at me again. Especially when we’re in the process of opening a bar together. Right now, however, I have to focus on Mr. Blanchard before he kills me and buries my body in the backyard.
“That’s not at all true. Not even remotely.”
He looks me up and down, judging me more than he ever has in the last seven years, and I don’t blame him for it. “Then what? Why do you want to marry my daughter?”
“Because I love her more than I’ve ever loved anything,” I answer immediately. “She has very quickly become the center of my entire universe. The one person I cannot live without. And if I can spend the rest of my life making her feel for me, evenhalfof what I feel for her, that would be a life worth living.”
