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Emotion overtakes my body as a sob escapes my lips when he rises to stand, holding our hands clasped together between us.
His forehead rests on mine while we absorb one another’s presence, never once breaking eye contact. My senses are on fire, my heart filled to bursting as tears flow easily down my flushed cheeks.
“Looking at you feels like I’m looking at the rest of my life, Bambi. And it’s the sweetest sight I have ever seen. Say you’ll marry me. Say you’ll let me love you until we’re grey and old. Say you’ll continue to carry my heart all the way through until forever. Say yes and make the only dream I ever truly had become my reality. Be my forever—”
I cut him off when I throw my right arm around his neck, pulling his mouth to mine while carefully angling my tender left arm.
He plants his palms on my cheeks, kissing me with everything inside him. Giving me his whole self.
“Yes,” I breathe against his lips before moving closer again to kiss him, caressing his tongue with mine slowly, deliberately.
I break the kiss to whisper.
“I love you. I love you, Caden. I don’t remember a time I haven’t loved you. You’re so deeply embedded in every part of my being; I could nevernotlove you. I fell for you then…I’m still fallingnow.”
His Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows roughly before he takes my mouth with his in a searing kiss that soars straight through my body, making my heart take flight. Our kisses begin to turn desperate until a voice invades the space, breaking the spell.
“For crying out loud! Can you twopleasefind an actual bed?”
We break apart to find an unimpressed Vaughn, clearly on his way to take a dip in the plunge pool beside us.
He crosses his hands over his chest and raises a dark brow. “Though chumps may not require beds, so yeah…this makes sense.”
Cade’s snort of laughter elicits one of my own, and before we know it, both of us are bent double as mirth overtakes us. Every time one of us begins to sober, our eyes shift to Vaughn, whose underwhelmed expression becomes more pained with each chuckle that rebounds through the grotto, and it sets us off again.
Vaughn shakes his head exaggeratedly as he slowly turns to leave. “I’m not saying I hate you, Caden North.” He glances over his left shoulder, his parting words setting us both off all over again.
“But…I would unplug your life support to charge my cell.”
CHAPTER39
CADEN
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
The soundof Ray Lamontagne’s “You Are The Best Thing,” courtesy of Beau’s deep baritone, booms across the daisy-strewn meadow beneath our feet as I spin my new bride into the safe haven of my embrace.
She throws her head back, laughing to the late spring sky above us as our friends and family members watch us annihilate our first dance.
“Beau is going to murder you, husband.” She lowers mirth-filled, doe eyes and pops a devilish brow. “We’re ruining his big solo debut.”
I hold her body as close to mine as possible, swaying our hips in unison. As I rest my forehead against hers, I feel her whole body relax into mine.
“He’ll live, Bam.”
Her eyes glimmer with emotion, and her brow furrows against mine as she holds my gaze. We continue to sway, drinking one another in, wholly grateful for this hard-won moment.
The events of the last eight months have been nothing less than a rollercoaster.
Jake’s funeral had been the hardest hurdle to overcome and the catalyst that the three remaining members of Misdirection needed to spur them towards their true passions.
Danny and Wolfe had announced they’d fallen in love—something Noah had known about for years but had forced them to keep under lock and key—and three weeks after Jake’s send-off, they were married in a quiet ceremony in Cornwall.
Four weeks after that, I donated bone marrow to my boy. Summer and I had been beyond nervous—my entire family, both blood and found, had been up the damn walls waiting for news—but he’d come out the other side like the champion I know him to be.
It was in the interim that I’d campaigned for this wedding, which Summer had been keen to push back in favour of ensuring Jesse’s health. But both Jesse and Bug had begged her—and she couldn’t refuse when they joined forces so beautifully.
The ceremony had been quaint, just a handful of our nearest and dearest—and Vaughn fucking Burton.
