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“You look like a princess.” Her small hands play with the roses on my dress.
“I tell you what, you be the princess, and I’ll be your friend, okay?”
Without hesitation, the little girl climbs into my lap, and every thread of me unravels to her embrace.
“She, uh…” Luca stammers to explain. “She needs a…” and he stops when I smile.
I understand. Gia needs a mom, so I let her sit in my lap and play with the roses on my dress because I can only imagine how I’d miss my mama too.
The feelings, the wishes I start making as Redix holds my hand later while we walk back to our suite—I never dreamed this far ahead. I lost them to a nightmare and never thought I’d get them back.
“I know what you’re thinking, Candy Cade.”
He beeps open our door but won’t let go of my hand. I don’t answer while we let it close behind us. It’s gentle, his light grip on my neck, pulling my lips towards his, saying, “I wish it too.”
His kiss claims my lips while he unzips my gown, and my resistance falls to the floor.
I didn’t know this was possible again. The butterflies in my belly, the flutter of my heart, the tears he brings to my eyes, making love to me so slow, so perfect. We can’t capture it in our hands, though we try holding on to the love between us. My hand caresses his scar while he’s deep inside me because I can.
I will love away our pain. I will stand in our fire and burn it down to find what’s new, what we can build with nothing but this love, our promise—infinity.
“Cade.” He clasps my hands in his over my head. “I want it.” He’s holding my gaze, holding every part of me—heart, body, and future. “I want all of it with you.”
The race of our hearts, the way his body takes mine into the softest moans, he has me.
“I am,” I promise to his breath lingering over mine. “I am with you.”
It’s the happiest I’ve been, closing my eyes in his arms minutes later.
“You didn’t open your last present,” he whispers in my ear.
I see the small gift on the desk in the moonlight through the curtains. It’s not a ring box. “This is my gift.” I kiss his hands in mine.
“So is the car I bought you.”
“What?” I roll over to find him grinning. “I don’t need a new car.”
“Yeah, you do. It’s a fresh start for us. Your car goes back too far.”
He’s right. My car makes me think of that year. The last one we were together.
“Redix, I don’t need you buying me things. I’ve loved you since you were riding an old, red Schwinn bike.”
“That’s why those are keys to a new, blue Land Rover.”
It doesn’t stop. He’s overwhelming me with everything perfect. Perfect days in Malibu. Perfect nights here. Perfect gifts. Perfect sex with the perfect man.
All this love. “I don’t know what to say.” All this hope.
“Well, damn darlin’… that only took twenty years.” I can see his grin, his kiss searching for mine in the moonlight. “I finally got that sexy mouth of yours to shut up.”
Only he can say that in the cutest way.
Especially when his lips are on mine, and then his body, and then finally, an hour later, when he’s sleeping beside me.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
It splinters through the peaceful dawn, through my dream about a tiny hand in mine.
