Marry me.
Marry me.
It wasn’t those words that poured from me as I came. It was his name. I uttered his name in the same intonation that I would cry for God. It was rapture and exaltation all culminating into that one word.
Drew.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
DREW
Inever did give her a direct answer. I didn’t have onetogive. Not then. Nothing that could verbalize the shit I wanted to say. Not long after she cried out my name, I carried her to the shower and we made love again. I held her all night, stroking her hair, grazing her skin with my fingertips, barely sleeping as I stared up at the ceiling and listened to her sleep.
There was no way I could rest. Not fully. The beating of my heart felt loud enough to wake the entire neighborhood.
As soon as dawn broke, the orange rays of light streaming through the crack in the curtains, I’d rolled her off my chest, leaned down to kiss her cheek and whispered in her ear.
“I won’t be long. There’s something I have to do with Harry this morning.”
I didn’t even think she was all that aware when she whispered I love you before burying herself in the center of the bed and pushing her face into my pillow.
It killed me to leave her, but there really was something I had to do. I found Harry sitting in the bar like he hadn’t even been to bed. His eyes were swollen as he sat on the edge of one of the sofas, resting an elbow on his knee while his other hand worried his forehead. He didn’t see me straight away.Not until I was standing right in front of him.
“You got my message.” I smiled.
He looked up, lifting his head like it weighed a tonne. “This better be important.”
“Was I interrupting something?” I smirked, wondering if he’d got his dick sucked after all.
“Nothing other than a rare bit of sleep. Nothing I won’t get again tonight… hopefully. If all goes well at Tate’s fake party.”
I scowled, even though I was still smiling, watching him as he groaned and creaked when he rose to stand in front of me.
“Where are we going?” he asked, breaking out into a wide yawn.
I nodded in the direction of the door, and Harry started to make his way out to the yard with me following him. Once outside, I watched every move he made as he took each step slowly. I didn’t care what the fucker said. Tomorrow morning, I was getting Doc to The Hut, and I was intervening. Harry would spend a month in hospital if it was needed. I wasn’t ready to see him look so frail yet. Not when he’d always been so strong for me.
When he started to walk over to the bikes all lined up in a row, I whistled through my teeth and caught his attention. He turned slowly, looking at me with confusion written all over his face.
“This way…” I didn’t wait for his response before I made my way over to the pawnshop, fiddling with the keys in my hand and pushing the right one into the door, turning it and walking inside.
I made a point not to look at Harry’s expression until wewere where we needed to be. I had a feeling he already knew what was happening. With me leading the way, the two of us walked past all the goods in the shop, making our way to the small office area at the back. It was so tiny, it didn’t even have a desk in there. We’d made it look as bare as possible, lining it with steel shelves along one wall that held some tatty looking binders, as well as some other rusty old junk that was designed to make this space look more like a storage unit of shit than the place that held one of the most important places on all of our land.
The vault.
Dragging a dusty old stack of green filing cabinets out of the way, I pushed it to the side to reveal the small vault where we kept the really important Hound treasures and information.
“Oh shit,” Harry mumbled under his breath.
I found myself smirking as I entered the code and slid my thumb over the pad, waiting until it recognized my print before releasing with a small puff of mechanical air. I opened it up slowly—unable to deny the way my heart was pounding in my chest.
“It’s happening.” I heard the smile in Harry’s voice, and when I reached inside the vault, I picked up the small red box with the HB foil stamped on the lid. I rested it in the palm of my hand, bouncing it up and down carefully, feeling the weight of it.
“Happiness isn’t as heavy as I once thought it would be,” I said, finally looking up to see his face.
The old fuck was crying. Not exactly snot-sobbing, but there were tears in his eyes, and he didn’t try to hide the fact as he frantically wiped away the ones that had already fallen with a rough swipe of his thumb.
“Fucking hell, son,” he pushed out, dragging the back of his hand over his mouth and beard. “Does she know?”
