Page 108 of Holding Penalty

“Where you picked me up?” I grin. “Yeah, I remember the road.”

“This is the exact spot. Right here. This is exactly where I stopped and told you to get into my truck.”

My brows draw low. I smile, feeling skeptical. “This is the exact spot?” I look up and down the long road. The entire shoulder is identical. “How could you possibly tell?”

“Right there.” Nash points at something on the ground, about three feet away from the shoulder of the road.

I walk over and see that it’s a strangely shaped rock, painted a bright blue and stuck into the ground like someone intentionally planted it there.

“It was the end of summer when I picked you up right here. When the light from the cabin spilled out of the open door, when I was arguing with you to get you to hop in, it illuminated a little cluster of flowers that were growing right there at the time. I noticed. I remembered exactly what they looked like, exactly what colors they were.”

Nash steps toward me. There’s so much affection beaming in his eyes, my heart swoops.

“I drove this road every excuse I could get,” he continues. “I was always able to spot that little cluster of flowers. It always made me think of that night. Always made me smile.”

I’m smiling, too, a pressure of emotions swelling behind my eyes.

“One day, I noticed the flowers were starting to wilt. I didn’t want to forget exactly where this spot was. So, I got a rock, painted it blue, and planted it here as a landmark. The flowers used to be right behind it.”

Nash puts his hands to my waist, holding me.

“I never wanted to forget the exact spot you got into my truck for the first time, and back into my life for the last time. Because I don’t ever want you to get out of it again.”

An intense feeling of expectation laces through the air. It’s like that feeling you get sometimes before a storm, when you can sense it coming. But the feeling is the exact opposite of ominous. It feels like something incredible is about to happen, but I don’t know what, or how.

Then Nash lets his hands drop from my sides. He takes a step back. And gets down on one knee.

A warm buzz swims through me when he reaches for my hand.

“Piper, will you divorce me? And then marry me again, for real this time?”

I’m almost choked with happiness, but not enough to keep a laugh from bursting through. “That has to be the most fucked up way anyone’s ever been proposed to.”

Sheer joy is blooming in Nash’s eyes. “No, I’m pretty sure our first one was worse.”

I’m laughing. Tears cloud my eyes as I try to blink them back.

“Well, don’t keep me waiting,” Nash prompts, even though I think he’d wait all day and night on his knees for me.

“Of course, you idiot! Get up here!”

I tug at his hand to bring him to his feet, and when he is, he pulls me into him, wrapping his arms around me and lifting me off the ground as his lips press to mine.

“I’m still keeping my name,” I say, smiling against his lips.

“Baby, I don’t want anything about you or about us to change. The only thing I want different is that when I say I do, I want to mean it.”

I kiss him again. I run my hand across his cheek, loving the masculine scrape of his stubble against my palm. It makes me want to feel more of him. All of him.

"How reckless is it that I’m imagining laying that blanket out in the bed of your truck again?” I whisper into his ear.

I feel him growing against me. He groans. “In broad fucking daylight? Really damn reckless. But don’t tempt me.”

“How about just driving a little over the speed limit to get us home as soon as possible?”

Nash grins. “Now that, I can do.”

Back home, we wear ourselves out in bed and fall into a tangled mess of limbs and heaving chests. I’m drifting to sleep, head against Nash’s sweat-slicked chest, when it really hits home that this is the rest of our lives.