“She’ll come. She’s been miserable without you.” Dex grins. “Also I want to see her face when she sees this.”
Marnie arrives exactly twenty-eight minutes later.
She walks through the door looking exhausted and beautiful and absolutely terrified of what I’m about to do.
Her eyes find mine across the room, then drop to the book in my hands.
She crosses the room slowly and takes it from me, flipping through the pages.
“Roman.” Her voice is carefully controlled. “What is this?”
“Research.” I move to stand beside her, close enough that our arms touch. “I’ve been reading what you read. Trying to understand what you love about these stories.”
Her face goes red. “You read this?”
“I read five of them.” I take the book from her hands and turn to a heavily highlighted page. “This scene here. Page one forty-seven. I want to try it with you.”
She covers her face with her hands. “You’re insane.”
Rodriguez hobbles over on his crutches, sees the book in my hand, and his face lights up.
“Cap. Is that what I think it is?”
“Research,” Brody calls from across the room.
“For what?” Rodriguez asks.
“Proving a point.” I look at Marnie, whose hands are still covering her face. “That aside from the extremely unrealistic sex, the couples fight for each other.”
Her hands drop. “You read five romance novels to prove a point.”
“Four and a half. I skimmed parts of the last one. The plot was repetitive.”
“And you highlighted them.”
“Green for things I want to try, yellow for things that need discussion, red for logistically impossible but theoretically interesting.”
She fans the pages. “There’s a lot of green.”
“I’m very motivated.” I pick up the book again, flip to a page I highlighted yellow. “This couple spent three chapters being terrified of what everyone else would think. And then they decided that what they had was worth more than other people’s opinions.” I close it. “Sound familiar?”
She stares at the book, then at me. “You’re really doing this. In front of everyone.”
“Everyone here already knows. And they don’t care.” I gesture around the room—Dex, Brody, Elliot, Rodriguez, Barrett sitting in the corner with a beer pretending not to listen. “So yeah. I’m really doing this.”
She laughs softly, then she leans forward and kisses me.
Right there in front of everyone. Intentional and public and perfect.
When she pulls back, she’s smiling. “You’re completely insane.”
“Committed.”
“Same thing.” She picks up the book, flips through my highlighted pages. “Some of these are very ambitious.”
“I’m very motivated.”
Rodriguez grins. “Can I just say—this is the most Cap thing I’ve ever witnessed. ‘I will solve this relationship problem with RESEARCH and HIGHLIGHTERS.’”
