Needing Her (22 page)

“I think it’s time for us to get a place a little bigger, don’t you?” I asked with a wink.

“Where does this key go to?” she asked breathlessly.

“Where do you think?” I nipped at her lips, and laughed when she gasped loudly.

“Connor, don’t fuck with me right now! Is this to the house I wanted?” I just smiled at her and she shook her head quickly back and forth. “They told us it had already been bought, I thought . . . wait . . . I don’t understand!”

“That’s because I’d already bought it, sweetheart. Hearing the way you said you’d always loved that house . . . well it wasn’t hard to know that you’d want to check into it once we’d actually started looking.”

She crushed her mouth to mine, and repeatedly said, “Thank you,” over and over as I slipped the chain over her head.

Grabbing the box, I pulled it out of the cushion and slowly worked it open with one hand as I spoke against her lips. “Besides, didn’t you always say it had a perfect backyard for a wedding? And I want an actual house for when I carry you over the threshold as my wife, and when we have children.”

Maci sat up straight, her gray eyes were wide, and it looked like she was holding her breath.

Once I had the ring between my fingers, I grabbed her left hand and slowly slid it on her ring finger. “Maci Price . . . will you marry me?”

Tears filled her eyes before slowly falling over and down her cheeks. She just sat there on my lap staring at the diamond on her hand before she grabbed my head and fused our mouths together.

“Is that a yes?” I asked when she dropped her head as she cried, and smiled before pressing a soft kiss to her forehead when she just nodded. “I need to hear you say it.”

When she looked back up, her eyes were bright with tears, and the most beautiful smile was lighting up her face. “Yes, Connor, I’ll marry you.” She kissed me again. “And move into that house with you, get married in the backyard, and have kids with you. Yes to all of it. I want it, everything,” she cried softly before kissing me harder.

Cupping her face, I pulled back to look in her eyes. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Does this mean we can start planning the wedding?” A harsh whisper came from behind me, and I rolled my eyes as Maci’s head jerked up.

“Yes, Amber, it means we can start planning the wedding now,” I answered monotone, but winked at Maci.

“Wait! She knew? And you didn’t tell me? You bitch!”

I just shrugged as Amber bounced over to us and grabbed Maci’s left hand. “I needed help picking your ring out.”

“Does this mean you already asked her?” a new voice asked behind me.

Maci looked up again as her parents came in the room and she slapped her hands down on my chest. “For fucking real. Did everyone know?”

I smiled as her brothers and sisters-in-law all came out of hiding and confirmed her question. “You mad at me, baby?”

“Yeah, I totally am! I can’t believe they all knew before—”

I pulled her to me, and silenced her with my mouth. “No you’re not,” I whispered and deepened the kiss.

She melted against my chest and smiled lazily. “You’re right. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.”

“So you sure you’re ready for all this?”

“I’m ready,” she whispered and dragged her lips across my jaw. “I want everything with you.”

I couldn’t agree more. I wanted everything . . . and as long as it was with this girl in my lap, I was ready for it all.

The End

Acknowledgments

A
S ALWAYS, THANK
you to my husband,
Cory
, for being so amazing and helping me out around the house when I was too involved with the story to even notice the dishes needed to be done! Love you, Bear!

Thank you to my amazing editor,
Tessa,
and agent,
Kevan
! Y’all have no idea how much I appreciate everything you do, and your feedback on my stories. I have no clue what I would do without either of you!

Amanda Stone
: I love my Sef! I’m pretty sure that says it all, ha! Ah, I love the moments like when we realized we were going to use the same character names and laughed about it, just to start fighting because you didn’t like my nickname for the character, and then end on an “I love yewww,” all within three minutes. No one else could ever understand us!

Kelly Elliott
: As always, I love you like crazy! You were just at my house for lunch two days ago and already I’m missing my Kel! I don’t know what I would do without you, and am so lucky to have you in my life. Mwah!

Bethany
and
Adam “Peter” Kalenderian
: Thank you for the simple fact that you are an awesome couple. Adam, I loved that you openly didn’t understand your wife’s love for books, or her excitement to meet me; which, of course, led to the challenge of putting
Family Guy
in a book. Challenge accepted and met.

To all my
readers
: I spent a couple weeks in the hospital for my back right in the middle of writing this book, and y’all have no idea how much your love, prayers, and support meant to me during that time. I am so blessed to have you all in my life, and my husband and I are so thankful for every one of you. It was hard getting back into the writing groove once I was home and on the mend, but your support for me was what helped me dive back in once I was well. So, thank you, thank you, thank you!

Molly’s Mafia
girls, and all the
bloggers
and
readers
who help with reveals, teasers, and announcements: I love you all so hard. I am beyond grateful for all the pimping y’all do, and wish I could tackle-hug everyone one of you! True story: you’re all amazing.

Want to see where it all began? Read on for a peek at

FROM
ASHES

to see the beginning of Connor’s story.

Chapter One

Cassidy

“D
O YOU EVEN
know anyone who’s going to be there, Ty?”

“Just Gage. But this will be good, this way we’ll be able to meet new people right away.”

I grumbled to myself. I wasn’t the best at making friends; they didn’t understand my need to always be near Tyler, and when I’d show up with bruises or stitches, everyone automatically thought I was either hurting myself or Tyler and I were in an abusive relationship. Of course that wasn’t their fault; we never responded to them, so the rumors continued to fly.

“Cassi, no one will have any idea about your past, the last of your bruises will be gone in a few weeks, and you’re gone from there now. Besides, I hate that you don’t have anyone else. Trust me, I understand it, but I hate it for you. You need more people in your life.”

“I know.” I instinctively wrapped my arms around myself, covering where some of the bruises were. Thank God none were visible right now unless I stripped down to my skivvies, but I couldn’t say the same for some of the scars. At least scars were normal on a person, and the worst of them were covered by my clothes, so I just looked like I was accident-prone.

“Hey.” Tyler grabbed one of my hands, taking it away from my side. “It’s over, it will never happen again. And I’m always here for you, whether you make new friends or not. I’m here. But at least try. This is your chance at starting a new life—isn’t that what that favorite bird of yours is all about anyway?”

“The phoenix isn’t a real bird, Ty.”

“Whatever, it’s your favorite. Isn’t that what they symbolize? New beginnings?”

“Rebirth and renewal,” I muttered.

“Yeah, same thing. They die only to come back and start a new life, right? This is us starting a new life, Cass.” He shook his head slightly and his face went completely serious. “But don’t spontaneously burst into flames and die. I love you too much and a fire wouldn’t be good for the leather seats.”

I huffed a laugh and shoved his shoulder with my free hand. “You’re such a punk, Ty; way to kill the warm and fuzzy moment you had going there.”

He laughed out loud. “In all seriousness”—he kissed my hand, then met and held my gaze for a few seconds before looking back at the road—“new life, Cassi, and it starts right now.”

Tyler and I weren’t romantically involved, but we had a relationship that even people we’d grown up with didn’t understand.

We grew up just a house away from each other, in a country club neighborhood. Both our fathers were doctors; our moms were the kind that stayed home with the kids and spent afternoons at the club gossiping and drinking martinis. On my sixth birthday, my dad died from a heart attack—while he was at work of all places. Now that I’m older, I don’t understand how no one was able to save him; he worked in the ER, for crying out loud, and no one was able to save him? But at the time, I just knew my hero was gone.

Dad worked long hours, but I was his princess, and when he was home, it was just the two of us. He’d brave tiaras and boas to have tea parties with me; he knew the names of all of my stuffed animals, talked to them like they would respond; and he would always be the one to tell me stories at night. My mom was amazing, but she knew we had a special relationship, so she always stayed in the door frame, watching and smiling. Whenever I would get hurt, if he was at work, Mom would make a big show of how she couldn’t make it better, and I’d have to hang on for dear life until Dad got home. She must have called him, because he would run into the house like I was dying—even though it was almost always just a scratch—pick me up, and place a Band-Aid wherever I was hurt, and miraculously I was all better. Like I said, my dad was my hero. Every little girl needs a dad like that. But now, other than precious memories, all I have left of him is his love for the phoenix. Mom had let Dad have his way with a large outline of a phoenix painted directly above my bed for when I started kindergarten, a painting that’s still there today, though Mom constantly threatened to paint over it. And although I tried to keep a ring he’d had all his adult life with a phoenix on it, my mom had found and hidden it not long after he died, and I hadn’t seen it since.

My mom started drinking obsessively when he died. Her morning coffee always had rum in it, by ten in the morning she was making margaritas, she’d continue to go to the club for martinis, and by the time I was home from school, she was drinking scotch or vodka straight out of the bottle. She made time for her girlfriends but stopped waking me up for school, stopped making me food, forgot to pick me up from school—pretty much just forgot I even existed. After that first day of being forgotten at school, and the next day not showing up because she wouldn’t leave her room, Tyler’s mom, Stephanie, started taking me to and from school without a word. She knew my mom was grieving, just not the extent of it.

After a week with no clean clothes and a few rounds of trial and error, I began doing my own laundry, attempted to figure out my homework by myself, and would make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for both of us, always leaving one outside her bedroom door. Almost a year after Dad’s death, Jeff came into the picture. He was rich, ran some big company—his last name was everywhere in Mission Viejo, California—but up until that day I’d never seen or heard of him. One day Stephanie dropped me off and he was just moved in, my mom already married to him.

That night was the first time I’d ever been hit, and it was by my own mother. My sweet, gentle mother who couldn’t kill a spider, let alone spank her own daughter when she misbehaved, hit me. I asked who Jeff was and why he was telling me to call him Dad, and my mom hit me across the back with the new scotch bottle she’d been attempting to open. It didn’t break, but it left one nasty-looking bruise. From that point on, I never went a day without some kind of injury inflicted by one of them. Usually it was fists or palms, and I began welcoming those, because when they started throwing coffee mugs, drinking glasses, or lamps, or when my mom took off her heels and repeatedly hit me in the head with the tip of her stiletto . . . I didn’t know if I would still be alive the next day. About a week after the first hit was when I first got beat with Jeff’s socket wrench, and that was the first night I opened my window, popped off the screen, and made my way to Tyler’s window. At seven years old, he helped me into his room, gave me some of his pajamas since my nightshirt was covered in blood, and held my hand as we fell asleep in his bed.

Over the last eleven years, Tyler has begged me to let him tell his parents what was going on, but I couldn’t let that happen. If Tyler told them, they would call someone and I knew they would take me away from Tyler. My hero had died, and the mom I loved had disappeared down a bottle; no way was I letting someone take me from Ty too. The only way I had gotten him to agree was agreeing myself that if he ever found me unconscious, all promises were off and he could tell whomever he wanted. But that was just keeping Tyler quiet; we never had factored in the neighbors . . .