“Your Lordship?” I bite down hard on my lower lip to keep the bubbling laughter at bay. “Or do you prefer Your Highness?”
“Only if you’ll be my queen.”
There it is. A proclamation I have waited a lifetime for.
“You do realize our mothers are nowhere to be seen.” I run my finger over his well stubbled cheek.
“There are some conversations they shouldn’t be privy to.”
I nod into him, digging my fingers through the back of his hair. I have always loved how thick and shiny it looked, and this, right here, is the culmination of about a thousand fantasies.
“I think maybe we should have a conversation. Jaxson—I’ve been in love with you for so long.” A lump the size of Oak Grove High settles in my throat. “I tried to tell you. I waited all the way until graduation night—talk about last minute.” I make a face. “That night at that big party you threw, I asked Conner to bring you out to the old oak so I could tell you how I felt—only you never showed. I got a sloppy drunk Miles Frampton instead.” I give a little shrug. “After I pried his paw off me, I found Conner, and he said you weren’t interested.” My heart spears with pain just thinking about how awful I felt that night and just about every night that followed. This wasn’t a rejection from some high school infatuation. This was my very best friend turning me down without so much as a word.
Jax stares intently over my shoulder. “Pops.” He closes his eyes. “That’s not what happened. Conner came and found me all right. He said ‘I want you to check this out’ and brought me over to the old oak where I saw you and Miles going at it. The real tragedy being—I had just told your brother how I felt. I told him to findyou.” He shakes his head. “I told him I wanted to be with you. That he should probably get over it because I knew we were right.”
My heart stops. I can’t breathe. “You told Conner that?” An instant pang of grief hits me. “Conner knew, and he never told me? I think I’m going to kill my brother.”
“No. Save him for me. But for now, let’s shelf all talks of murder until we get back to Oak Grove.” He tilts his chin toward his shoulder. “That is, if that’s what you want. You can stay in L.A. We’ll make it work. I swear I didn’t come out here like some caveman wanting to drag you back by the hair.”
A laugh bleats from me. “I’m going willingly. But what about Larissa? She made it sound like the two of you had something going that I might have interrupted.”
“Not a reality. She’s a mistake I made that I never want a part in again.”
“She said you told her about our agreement.” I bite down hard on my lip because I can feel the tears bubbling to the surface.
“She heard Mack telling Conner about it and wanted to know if it was true. I asked her not to say anything.”
“I knew she was a lying witch.” I pull him down by the back of the neck, those lips I’ve been craving just inches from mine.
“So, you’ll come back to Oak Grove?”
“Yes. I miss home. But mostly, I missed you. I love you, Jaxson Livingston Stade. I have loved you for as long as I have known you, and there’s nothing that can stop me from loving you until I draw my last dying breath.”
That sexy grin of his finally shows up before defusing a bit. “I love you, too, Poppy. I wish we never had a gap in our relationship, but I’m all for making up for lost time. I’m so glad we’re finally where we need to be—together.”
“Together.” I can’t take my eyes off this beautiful man. My beautiful man.
Jax leans in and presses his lips to mine. My mouth falls open, and I welcome him into my heart, my body, my soul. Here we are, together at last.
Jaxson feels like home.
He is home. He’s where I buried my heart all of those long, lonely years ago—and now, finally, I can feel it beating once again.
Of course, we don’t rush back to Oak Grove. We stopped off at a hotel overlooking the water and made up for lost time by making love properly with all the right words and our hearts knitted to one another the way it should have been the first time. Come Wednesday, Jax flies us back home in his private jet. I had only been on a Stade jet once, and that was to ogle while I dropped my mother and Deb off before they left for New York a few years back. Yes, Jax has an impressive collection of toys, but that’s not why I love him. I love him because he is the epitome of what a man should be, kind, caring, an all-around stellar human being. And tonight, the two of us are going to do what all-around stellar people should always strive to do—heal broken hearts, namely our mothers’.
I called Mack and asked if she could wrangle everyone over to Mom’s for dinner. I may have told her that something huge has happened between Jax and me—and, of course, she took the fertile leap to parenthood. But I didn’t stop her. I figure of all people Mack deserves a little prank of her own even if she did inadvertently pull this one on herself. I’ll let her stew in those pink and blue prenatal fluid juices for a day or so, because after all, I am my mother’s daughter. But as for the rest of the people present, they won’t have a clue that Jax and I are even on the guest list.
The house is lit up like a jack-o-lantern as we get out of the car. Jax comes over and wraps his arms around me, the whites of his eyes glinting in the moonlight.
“You ready for this, Eight Ball?”
“As ready as I’ll ever get. I guess our heyday of besting our mothers was short-lived.”
His head ticks back an inch. “Are you kidding?” He lets out a rumble of a laugh as we make our way up the porch. “We have an entire lifetime ahead of us to get even with those two. What do you say, tomorrow, we map out an outline of things to kick us off in the right direction? In bed, of course.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” I slip him a kiss, and my tongue spanks his like a promise of things to come before we head on in.
He pulls back with those bedroom eyes, a faint smile floating on his lips. “Yes, ma’am. May I have another?”
