* * *
Love?
Zuri sat up abruptly, pulling the sheet up over her breasts. She tucked one leg beneath her as Kyree sat up, too, propping his back against the cushioned headboard, the sheet across his waist.
“You love me?” she asked.
He tapped his fingers in a slow, restless rhythm against his thighs as he spoke. “I know that I don’t want this to end tonight. I know that when I’m with you everything makes sense. I love your boldness, your spark, and your wit––” He paused, his jaw working as if the words were fighting their way out. “I can’t stop thinking about you, Zuri. When we’re apart, your laugh is all I can think about, and your cocoa brown eyes are all I see. And when we’re together, the rest of the world disappears. I want––”
He inhaled deeply, the moment stretching as he searched her face. “I want to spend every midnight and morning with you in my arms. I want us to build a life together, Zuri,” he finally said, apprehension and hope in his voice.
Her eyes filled with tears she was fighting to hold back. “Kyree?—”
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said quickly, almost desperately. “I just needed you to know. Needed you to understand that what I feel for you is real. And I know the long distance would be hard at first, but I just can’t imagine a future that doesn’t have you in it.”
Zuri traced her fingertips along the line of his jaw, savoring the feel of the soft bristle of his beard beneath her touch. She held his eyes—those eyes that set her pulse racing, that had ignited something wild and electric in her from the start. But tonight, underneath that familiar heat and the magnetic pull, she felt something that made her breath catch: absolute bone-settling certainty, unwavering peace, the kind of steady truth that whispered, this is real, this is right. She took a deep stabilizing breath, and stepped into the abyss with him.
“Kyree, I wanted you the second I saw you standing at that bar––” Her voice broke, and her vision blurred as emotions overwhelmed her, and tears spilled down her cheeks. “You make me feel like I can take on the world. I feel whole with you…like I’m home.”
“Zuri,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with love, passion, and intensity as he pressed his palm to her chest. “You are home for me.”
She placed her hand over his, wrapping her fingers around his. “I love you, Kyree, and I don’t want to live without you either.”
With tears rolling down his cheeks, he cupped her face in his hands, his thumbs caressing her brows, her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, and her lips with such tenderness, as if he were handling something precious and breakable. “Do you mean it, baby? Are we really doing this?”
She nodded. “I want forever with you.”
His mouth found hers in a kiss that tasted like forever.
Zuri’s heart felt like it would explode, so great was her love, her joy, her gratitude for everything that had led her to Kyree.
He pulled back suddenly. “Hold on a sec,” he said, jumping off the bed.
“Hold on for what? Where are you going?” she called after him, brows furrowed.
“I’ll be right back. Stay right there,” he called over his shoulder, racing naked out of the room.
Zuri fell back into a nest of pillows with a sigh. Baby, I’m not going anywhere. This was what love was supposed to feel like. Wild and passionate and absolutely perfect. She’d never imagined she could be this deliriously happy with a man who loved her as fiercely as she loved him. A man she already knew would respect her, cherish her, and wanted her exactly as she was. With Kyree, she could be completely, authentically herself.
She marveled at how much her life had changed in four days. She’d come to Granite Falls to celebrate her freedom and find herself again. Instead, she'd found Kyree. This man who listened to her and paid attention, who was thoughtful and tended to her needs before they even arose.
She turned on her side when she heard him come back in––twisting and shaping something in his hands.
He climbed back onto the bed beside her and took her left hand. “We needed something to seal our commitment to each other,” he said, his voice suddenly trembling. “Now, this is just a placeholder. Just until I can buy you a real one.” He slid the makeshift ring onto her finger.
Zuri laughed as she took in the twisted wire circling her ring finger—so different from the “flawless” diamond Bryan had given her.
This ring, though—this simple twisted wire that Kyree had fashioned from a muselet—was all she would ever need from him. “No, this is perfect. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
He kissed her then, slowly, and thoroughly, until she was pulling him down into the sheets, sealing their promises with touch and breath and whispered words of forever.
She wrapped her arms about him, and nestled close, resting her cheek on his chest where his heart beat for her, knowing that this beautiful, absolutely perfect moment—was just the beginning.
Epilogue
I Do
February, Two Months Later…
