“I still can’t believe how gorgeous this city is,” I told Ryker as we walked hand in hand through the French Quarter in New Orleans.
The sun beat down on my exposed shoulders and arms as I walked next to him wearing a navy blue and white, strapless maxi dress. It was Labor Day weekend and tourists abounded in the city, although Ryker told me the main part of New Orleans was always packed with tourists and visitors.
Ryker looked over my shoulder at the cemetery we’d left blocks ago and shivered as if he could still see it. “I still think part of this place is creepy.”
I bumped his shoulder and laughed. “I can’t believe you’re afraid of the tombs.”
Ryker feigned another fearful shudder, making me laugh harder. “It’s just not right… all those dead people behind the walls. It’s as if they could open the doors and walk out at any moment.”
“Like Zombies,” I supplied with a grin.
“I’ll never understand your fascination with them, either.”
He removed his hand from mine, wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and pulled me to him playfully. We walked in silence until we turned a corner and stopped to watch a street performer play his saxophone on the corner. The man was old with leathered, thick skin that said he spent most of his life working outside in the sun. But his playing was incredible. Ryker and I stood on the corner, our arms wrapped around each other, swaying back and forth to the music.
A gust of breeze blew by, cooling the thick, hot air and pushed my hair in front of my face, momentarily blocking my view from the jazz musician.
Ryker’s warm hand moved to my cheek and brushed the hair out of my face, while at the same time cupping my cheek and lifting it to him.
His eyes stayed on my hair in a hazy-eyed look as his fingers ran through the length of it.
“What is it with you and my hair?” I asked, my breath husky and soft at the same time. He shook his head and watched the end of the lock slip from his fingertips.
“Reminds me of back when everything was good.”
I swallowed through a sudden egg-sized lump in my throat. “I thought things were good now.”
And they were. We had been in New Orleans for two days and the break away from the stress of the club had been exactly what I needed to relax. And Meg and Brayden were incredible. Even at his small height, the kid knew how to tackle hug with the best of them, which is what he did to Ryker and me as soon as we’d walked through their door. His head had rammed right into my crotch, almost making me lose my breath.
And that was how I met Meg. Hunched over and trying to keep Brayden’s head from knocking into my crotch with a grimace on my face. She simply laughed, waved him off, and then wrapped me in small arms that were deceptively fierce. She kissed my cheek and whispered in my ear, “I’m so glad he found you.”
When she pulled back, tears clouded her vision, but her grin was contagious.
I fell in love with their easy banter and laid back disposition in about five seconds.
I had thought everything was perfect.
I had thought we were perfect.
Based on the tightened jaw in Ryker’s expression and the way he stared at my hair as if I was threatening to chop it all off and burn it, I realized I might have been mistaken.
“Hey,” I whispered when he didn’t answer. I shook him gently with my hand on my hip only to realize that it trembled slightly against his cargo shorts. “What is it?”
He pulled his dark eyes to mine and blinked slowly. His nose wrinkled before he pressed his lips together. He cupped my cheeks with both of his large hands, effectively encompassing my whole face in his strong, protective hands. I’d placed everything I was into those hands at the promise he’d never leave. As he lifted me onto my tiptoes, I felt as if the floor was dropping under my feet.
My heart thudded against my chest as his lips finally brushed against mine. It was a whisper of a kiss that left me breathless and more confused.
When he pulled back, he kept me lifted onto my toes and my eyes stayed frozen on his.
He tripped over his words. “I’m sorry.”
My brow furrowed. “Sorry for what?”
He shook his head and then leaned down, pressing his forehead to mine. “I’m so sorry I ran that night.”
I gasped. “That’s what this is about? I thought… I thought we were past all that. You said—”
“I know,” Ryker nodded, and then set me on my feet. His eyes glanced over my shoulder behind me and he directed me to a nearby metal bench. The heat from the sun burnt through the thin fabric of my dress, almost frying the backs of my thighs in the sweltering heat. “And I wasn’t lying when I said we’ve wasted enough time. I want it all with you, Faith.” He dropped to his knee, but my head was spinning so quickly from his words that I didn’t recognize the gesture as he crouched in front in me. “The thing is… that night when you hopped out of my truck, right before you did and I ran my hand through your hair, I knew, that at that moment, I had everything I’d ever wanted sitting in the cab of my run down pickup.”
Tears welled in my own eyes as I saw an unknown expression in his. My hands trembled in his and my knees shook from nerves and fear at whatever he had to say next.
“We messed that up back then… or I did.” His forehead dropped to my knee. He ran his head against my knee as one of my hands threaded through the hair on the back of his head. I could feel his nerves falling off him in rolling waves that only increased my pulse until it was all I could hear. “I’m screwing this up,” he said as he leaned back and finally… finally… a small smile appeared.
“Screwing what up?”
He laughed once, shook his head, and then held onto my hands firmly in one of his. “It was just over five years that I pulled my truck into this town, parked it two blocks over, walked in Mickey’s pub, and asked for the largest whiskey he’d give me. The bartender slid me a glass, leaned his elbows on the bar, and said, ‘what the fuck did you just mess up?’” Ryker laughed again once, reliving the memory in distant eyes. “And do you know what I said?”
I shook my head, too terrified to speak, too uncertain as to what he was trying to tell me.
“I told him, ‘the best thing that ever happened to me.’” He paused and took a long breath as one of his hands went to his front pocket. “What I’m trying to tell you, Faith, is that when we were younger, for years I couldn’t get you out of my head… and that was even before we went out on a date. And as soon as we went on our first date, I knew… I knew then that there would never be anyone else for me. When I showed up here, I still knew there’d be no one else for me and there hasn’t been. What I don’t want to do is wait another day to give you the future I always wanted you to have.”
I gasped as his hand lifted a black box out of his pocket. “What the …?”
Ryker smiled. Finally the grin I was used to seeing on him graced his lips as he exhaled heavily. “Marry me.”
Tears fell from down my cheeks as he let go of my hands long enough to open the box and pull out a diamond. It was massive and sparkly, although it could have been the sun. I didn’t care. It could have been a speck of coal, and I would have had the same reaction.
“Holy shit.”
Ryker laughed as he slid the ring on my finger. “Is that a yes?”
I stared at the ring. I stared at him. My pulse beat in my ears as the quiet clapping of the strangers gathered around us, witnessing our moment, began cheering and celebrating us.
I shook my head, gathered my wits that had been spilled all over the scorching cement, and stared directly at Ryker.
“Yes,” I laughed out the word as I launched myself from the bench—pulling a Brayden and tackle hugging the crap out of him.
“You said yes!” Meg cheered as soon as we arrived back at her house later that night. She began crying while she laughed and congratulated us the second she saw the ring on my finger.
I had been speechless.
Ryker’s crewmate Pete walked around the corner, four champagne glasses in one hand and a bottle in the other.
“Was I that much of a foregone conclusion?” I asked, teasingly glancing at everyone in the room.
Ryker’s hand on my hip tightened and he pulled me into him, pressing his lips against my temple.
“What can I say,” Meg said, clapping her hands and helping unload the glasses from Pete’s hands. “Epic love like yours is simply meant to be.”
Epic love. I smiled at the thought of Ryker and me always being destined for one another.
Before I knew it, we were spending the entire night finishing off two bottles of champagne, the four of us sitting in Meg’s cozy living room long after Brayden went to bed.
It was when Pete excused himself for the restroom at one point that Ryker’s expression grew serious.
A thick tension appeared in the room and his hand squeezed my thigh. He looked at Meg and nodded down the direction of the hall where Pete disappeared.
“He’s not like that and you know it.” Meg scolded him softly but firmly as soon as she recognized his look
“I know he’s a man and you’re beautiful.” Ryker said it with a friendly smile, while his hand tightened on my thigh in reassurance. I wasn’t worried. I had been around Ryker and Meg for days and fully trusted what Ryker told me about their relationship. It was that of family. Sure, I knew they considered the other attractive—how could you not? But there was never an inappropriate glance or jealous tinge in Meg’s eyes when she saw us together.
And I couldn’t have hated her even if there was. Meg was sweet and kind. She was genuine and full of love. She had strength that surpassed anything I felt like lived within me, and I knew she’d been through her own version of hell with losing her husband. Yet it hadn’t hardened her in the least; it simply gave her strength to create the best life possible for Brayden.
Basically, I wanted to be Meg when I grew up.
Meg waved Ryker off, dismissing him and his concern. “It’s fine, Ryker. We don’t even see him much. He calls and checks in when he’s in town and stops by occasionally to take Brayden to the park. I’ve known him my whole life.”
“You’ll let me know if you need help?”
By the way she rolled her eyes every time he did, I knew this weekend wasn’t the only time she’d heard the question. I left them to their brother-sister argument, rested my head against Ryker’s shoulder, and closed my eyes, listening to them bickering like siblings while the thick darkness pulled me under to sleep. I felt safer and more loved in that very moment than I could ever remember feeling before in my entire life.
When Ryker carried me to bed, only waking me to take off my clothes and pull me next to him in the bed we shared in Meg’s guestroom, the glint of the outside light caught my ring.
“It wasn’t a dream,” I whispered, staring at my diamond ring. I rolled and turned to Ryker, propping my chin on his chest while he looked at me with amusement. “This is real.”
I trailed my hand down the short stubble on his cheek and felt the vibrations from his laughter rumble under my chin and my hand.
In one swift move, Ryker had us positioned so he was over me, grinding his hips against mine. “This was my dream,” he said huskily into my ear as he rocked into me, easily filling me with one swift push. “So I made it real. And I’ll spend the rest of our lives making sure your dreams come true.”
I pressed my fingers into the hard flesh in his lower back as he pulled out and then pushed back into me slowly, building my orgasm quickly.
“You already did,” I whispered into his ear.
His rhythm faltered for a brief moment until he kissed me as if he was claiming me. As our bodies rocked together until we climaxed, hiding our groans of ecstatic pleasure, I knew that I’d spend a lifetime making sure Ryker knew how true that was.