“Do you think they’re making up?” Dizzy did say something about masks earlier. Perhaps that’s what West had in his hand.
“They could be.” He stops. Someone has laid down a picnic blanket. “I wanted to get you alone. Away from our combined family.”
There are a couple of fuzzy woollen blankets, soft oversized pillows, and a woven basket filled with treats and a bottle of bubbles. Non-alcoholic of course.
A warm glow emits from a dozen candle lit lanterns. “You did this?”
“I did.” He presses his lips to the top of my head. “You are my entire world, Summer Heart.”
Is this... is this it? Is this when he asks me? I crane my neck like that will help me peer into the basket to see if there’s a ring box inside.
He drops to his knees.
My heart almost bursts out of my chest. “Rebel, what are you doing?”
“Join me?” His cashmere smile sets loose butterflies in my belly.
I lower myself onto the blanket. He’s probably worried that I might faint when he digs the ring out. With the way my knees wobbled it’s safer for me to be sitting. I lick my lips. “Rebel, what—”
His lips land on mine. His tongue seeks access.
I melt into the lingering kiss.
He rests his hand on the side of my neck. When he pulls away, his thumb brushes my jawline. A heavy breath deflates his chest. “I need to ask you something.”
“What is it?” I wrap my hand around his. “What do you want to ask me?”
Because I am dying to say yes. I want to spend the rest of my life with this man. I want to carry his name as well as his children. I want him to claim my future the way he claimed my body and my heart.
I want to know that his future is mine too. That we’re inextricably tangled in this life.
“Is there anything else that you haven’t told me? About coming home? About why you haven’t been yourself lately?”
“It’s hard.” I kiss the heel of his palm. This isn’t our moment. It makes sense. It’s Rogue and Ivy’s moment. Still, it stings. “I told you they hurt me and blamed me for their actions.”
“You did, but you didn’t make it sound like you could never come back,” he says. “You always say how much you miss it here. Miss the sky at night when it’s glittering with stars. Miss your brothers.”
I miss my mom and the world that she lived in before she died. The world in which our neighbors were friends. When I thought I could live here forever.
But things change. Childhood memories were soured by the way I was treated after the incident.
I lay down on the blanket and stare up at the stars. There isn’t as much light pollution here as there is in the city. The stars are multiple. Clear specks of gold dust dotting the navy heavens.
I take a deep breath and then exhale. “They hate me here. Hate that my brothers put their boys on blast. Hate that I tried to stand up for myself by telling the police what really happened.”
Rebel lays on his side beside me. He splays his hand over my belly. Quietly waiting for me to go on.
“The boy that I was dating was the mayor’s son. It’s a small town, but that office still means something to these people. Another was the captain of the football team. Oh, and yeah, another was the son of the sheriff.”
Rebel hisses. It’s not an unexpected reaction. Reporting the sheriff’s son was never going to go well.
“Looking back, I should have begged Owen not to make me tell. But it was either that or he was going to take his shotgun and put a bullet in one of them, and I couldn’t let my brother end up in jail because I was dumb enough to find myself in that position.” I hate thinking about any of it, but when I’m here, it’s all I seem capable of doing. “Or at least that’s what I believed at the time. Somehow, I let them get into my head. I let them make me believe I was at least partly responsible.”
“Kitten,” Rebel says with so much empathy, and a hint of anger.
“That’s the part you know.” It was what I told him when I was ready for our relationship to go from friendly to intimate. “Duke’s parents convinced everyone I was a slut who wanted to make trouble for their son. The parents of the other boys followed suit, and suddenly I was a pariah. No one wanted their sons hanging out with the slut or their daughters being seen with me in case being a slut was catching. The more convinced people became that I was the problem, the more comfortable they got coming up to me and telling me I should leave. That I wasn’t wanted here. That it was a good thing my mom was dead because she would be ashamed.”
Tears roll down my cheeks. After all this time, it shouldn’t hurt like it does. My mom would be proud of me. She would have been on my side. She would have told all these people to go to hell. But it still gets to me.
