Of coursewe’re engaged?I just ... I can’t wrap my mind around this statement. It scares the hell out of me. Because it means he feels something real. This is more than just kissing in front of my dad’s music shrine.
Stone frowns. “Why didn’t your family say anything when we went to their house?”
My ribs squeeze so hard it feels like my lungs will burst. I can tell the truth right now and Stone will never look at me with tenderness again. He’ll never hold my hand.
He’ll never kiss me in a way that fills me to my toes and makes me feel seen. I’ll never feel like I’ve been picked first ever again.
I’ll be starved of light.
If Stone is the sun, then living without him is being banished to a life of shadows.
“Because ...” Then, like with all lies, when the floodgates open, water bursts forth. “We wanted to keep things a secret for a while. Letit cool. Feel it out. We didn’t want the world to know before we were ready to tell them.”
He takes my hands and rubs his thumbs over my knuckles. His warmth is a luxury I never want to be without.
“How would you feel if we told them now?” Before I can protest, he adds, “From the first moment I met you, I knew there was something special between us, and now that I know what it is, I want the world to know. It’s not fair to keep this secret to ourselves.”
That secret sits on top of a trapdoor.
He continues, and I shake off the sinking feeling opening in my stomach. “This also means—and yes, I’m going out on a limb here, feel free to catch me if I fall—if you knew me before the amnesia, then I’ve been afraid of something that doesn’t exist. I couldn’t have been an awful person because you wouldn’t have loved me.”
Loved you?
He keeps going, oblivious to the deer-in-headlights look I know is plastered across my face. “Don’t you see? I wasn’t awful, because you wouldn’t have been with me. Plus, we may not have spent a lot of time togethernow, but I feel likeI know you.”
“You know me?” I whisper.
He nods.
Stone desperately wants tonotbe the person he was before—the person who threatened to blackmail me, the person who rejected Hercules, the person who called me a small bureaucrat.
That’s all he wants. Redemption. Reinvention. A future that isn’t shackled to his past.
Who am I to starve him of that?
My throat jams up as if a roll of toilet paper has been crammed inside it. I can’tnotask. “Whatdo you know about me?”
He slides a hand over my cheek. “I know you put the needs of others before your own. I know you have taken care of me every step of the way. I see you, Coco Higginbotham, just like you see me.”
No one—no one—has ever said anything like this to me. Not in my whole life. And I want to believe it. I want to bathe in every second of this moment, so all I manage to say is, “Yes.”
I’m saying yes to him. To being swept away in this moment, to being caught in a lie that feels truer than it should.
Stone taps my nose playfully. “This calls for a celebration.”
“It does?”
My mind barely works. Or maybe it’s working on overdrive and I’m simply unable to keep up.
Stone slides an arm over my shoulders and turns to the guys. The construction site is loud, full of rumbling and beeping, but Stone puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles, getting Isaac’s attention.
Isaac signals to the guys to stop what they’re doing.
“What’s up?” he calls out. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s great,” Stone yells back. “After work, we’re going to Sparkle Bar to celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?”
