He reached for her hand, his fingers closing around hers with a tenderness that seemed at odds with everything I knew about him. Donovan Corvo wasn’t a gentle man. Not with his business. Certainly not with his sons. But I couldn’t speak about what his relationship with his dead wife had been like.
A tight knot wound deeper in my gut.
Donvan’s thumb stroked across the back of Mom’s hand. “I wasn’t looking for someone. After my wife passed, I never thought I would open my heart to another woman. To find love, or if I was still capable of loving.”
No one moved.
No one breathed.
“I made peace with that,” he continued. “With being alone and focusing on my family. My boys. Building my business. It felt like enough. And then you walked into my life, and I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I didn’t want to spend another day of my life without embracing what I found with you. What we found together.”
Oh God.
No.
No, no, no?—
This wasn’t?—
He couldn’t be?—
Donovan reached into his pocket with his free hand, pulling out a small black velvet box. Then he did the fucking unthinkable. He dropped to one knee beside her chair.
The room drew in an audible gasp, but I went numb, my world tilting as gravity shifted. I clutched my chair arms, clinging to them tightly.
“I want you,” Donvan confessed. “I want this. I want us. I want to build a life together, a real one. I want Mallory to be a part of this family”—his gaze flicked to me briefly, including me in this declaration—“—I want her to have brothers who’ll protect her the way mine protect each other.”
Brothers?
My eyes caught Maddox’s for a second, but it was long enough to see the tautness in his entire body and the fierce scowl etched on to his lips.
Donovan opened the box to reveal the biggest rock I’d ever seen, a pear-shaped diamond. It glittered brightly. “Move in with me. Build something real here. Something lasting. Something neither of us has to run from or hide.”
My heart started pounding. So loud I was sure everyone could hear it, could see my panic written across my face.Don’t ask the question. Don’t ask her to?—
“I don’t want to wait. Mara…will you marry me?”
Total.
Complete.
Fucking.
Silence.
She couldn’t say yes. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t make such a monumental decision like marriage without talking to me first. This was too fast. They’d only known each other for a few months. How could they think about getting married?
Please say no. Or I need to think about it.
I stared into the back of Mom’s head, projecting her denial so hard I wasn’t sure if I was screaming it only inside my mind.
Mom’s fingers grazed over the small velvet box. Her face was partially obscured, but I was sure she was smiling. And then my worst fucking nightmare came true as the words I dreaded left her mouth. “Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
The consent pierced my heart, echoing through the dining room. My shoulders slumped. Disbelief crashed over me in a wave, drowning me.
Across the table, Maddox’s eyes found mine, and I saw the same realization dawning. The same disbelief morphing into horrified understanding.
The sameoh, fuck noscreaming through my own head.
