“I want to be worthy of you.”
“You are,” she whispered, brushing her lips against his. His legs bumped against the bed and he wrapped his arms around her to keep from knocking her over. She giggled. “See? You’ve got me. Always. That’s what I need. Just you. Isn’t that what you said when you came to Idaho? You love me just the way I am. Warts and all. And I loveyou, I want to marryyou. Not some fancy house, although this place is super cute. Can we turn the other bedroom into a recording studio?”
“No.” They were going house hunting tomorrow. “Wait.” He wound his fingers into her hair and held her close, kissing her until she was breathless and his nerves finally settled.
Then he stepped back and lowered to one knee. He pulled the ring out of his pocket and held it in front of him. “Liana Hansen, you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met and the only woman I’ve ever fallen in love with. I want to fall in love with you over and over again, every day for the rest of our lives. Will you marry me?”
She nodded through what looked like happy tears, a stupid grin all over her face, and this time when she reached for him, he let her pull him down onto the bed. Sometimes he needed to be her stable rock, and sometimes he needed to let her tip him sideways and make his life crazy.
Just before they headed to Jake and Dani’s that night, he took a selfie of the two of them on his front porch. Liana coached him how to frame it just so, showing off the ring but in a subtle kind of way.
“You’re an Instagram natural,” she promised as he added a filter and a border to the picture.
But instead of posting it online for the world to see, he just emailed it to the one brother he wouldn’t be able to tell in person.
Hey kid. So I’m getting married. Gonna go house hunting. My place is too small and she needs a studio. Should be in a new place by Christmas, or the spring at the latest, depending on how much work we need Jake to do to whatever I buy. Your welcome home party will be fancy-ass. Love, Dean (and his future bride)
THE END (FOR NOW)
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Epilogue
Nine months later
“Ican piss by myself,” Sean growled, and Dean held up his hands, backing away slowly.
“Of course you can,” he said, reminding himself to be fucking patient with the fucking jackass, because he’d been fucking injured while at fucking war. Concussion, brain-bleed, vertigo…a long list of things that added up to the fact his brother had gotten his bell rung, a fucking good one, and it was a miracle he’d walked away without any more serious injuries.
Acquired Brain Injury. Traumatic Brain Injury. Dean had heard both of them, over and over again. Sounded pretty fucking serious.
Expletives didn’t make it any easier, really. But they didn’t fucking hurt, either.
Sean slammed the door in his face and Dean stood there, forearm braced against the door frame, listening as his brother slowly moved through the bathroom—then stumbled, crashed, and fell.
He waited, hand poised on the door knob.
“Go away!” Sean yelled. “I fell down. It’s not the end of the fucking world.”
Dean wasn’t the only one trying out the expletive-laden coping strategy. And Sean was right. If he needed to crawl to the toilet, so be it. Dean sighed and nodded at the door, lifting his voice to travel through it. “I’m gone, man.”
“And stay gone for a while. Fuck. I’m not a fucking invalid.”
Except he was, at least temporarily.
And Dean and Liana were his roommates, for better or worse. Nobody else could do it. Jake and Dani’s son was still pretty little and woke often in the night. Matt’s apartment wasn’t set up for a guest who wasn’t sharing his bed. And their father…well, that was a non-starter.
So when Sean came home, it was to the new house that Dean and Liana had bought. They’d barely had a chance to christen it before Sean was hurt. But Liana hadn’t missed a beat, and when Dean brought it up, she didn’t even let him finish the ask before she wrapped her arms around him and said his brother was welcome to stay as long as needed.
If only Dean had that same level of patience. He’d give anything to make Sean whole again. To heal him. But they were butting heads, constantly, and it was wearing on them both.
He counted backwards from ten, slowly, and headed downstairs. He found his woman curled up with a scratch pad, a couple of coloured pens, and a hockey puck stress ball.
She was working that thing over like nothing else. He’d be lucky if it didn’t resemble a soccer ball when she was done with it.
