“Hmm? Why?”
Jagger’s low laugh rumbled through his chest, and he started trailing a path of kisses across my jaw and down my neck. “Because we have to leave today, and I wanted a few hours with you before we had to start packing.”
“Just a few?” My body broke out in goose bumps when he lightly bit down on the sensitive part of my neck; and when he kissed me in the same spot, I felt his lips pull into a smile.
“Yeah, just a few.” He sat back so he could look at me again, his face serious. “You gonna be okay when we go back?”
“I think so. If LeAnn starts acting up again, we’ll call the police. I doubt she will now, though. Not with the possibility of going to jail for an extended period of time.”
Jagger nodded, his eyes drifting away as he thought over either my answer, or the possibility of LeAnn’s revenge. They’d arrested her Thursday night on charges of burglary, stalking, criminal mischief, and harassment. But with bail set at only five thousand, it wasn’t hard to figure that someone would pay the five hundred to get her out, and on Saturday, someone had done exactly that. Now she was out of jail, and the officer was telling us to get a protective order against her as soon as we were back in town.
“What about you? Are you going to be okay?”
Jagger’s lips slowly curved into a smile. “I’m fine, Grey. She can only hurt me if she hurts you, it’s you I’m worried about.”
“Well, I’m okay. I really do think she’ll do anything to avoid jail.”
“You’re probably right.” Releasing his arm from where he had it wrapped around my body, he slowly brushed my hair away from my face, and my eyes fluttered shut when his fingers traced across my cheekbones, down my nose, and across my lips.
The last three days in Seattle with Jagger had been perfect, and exactly what we needed. Friday afternoon he met with the guy who owned the gallery, and I’d gone out to a late lunch with Janie and Heather for a few hours until Jagger practically dragged me back to the hotel and bed.
I hadn’t complained.
Other than that afternoon, answering the door for room service, quick trips to the bathroom, and a shower together, we hadn’t left the bed. We’d ordered a few movies, talked about everything from here on out and what was happening with LeAnn, and spent the rest of the time wrapped up in each other. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I was happier than I had been in this suite with him, even when Ben had been alive.
I refused to compare my relationship with him to the relationship I had with Ben . . . but I knew that if I did compare the two, I would quickly realize they weren’t comparable. Everything was different with each of them. And now Jagger was my life while Ben was my past.
There was something about Jagger that felt perfect despite everything we’d gone through to get here. There was something about the timing that felt like it couldn’t have been more perfectly planned. And there was something about the way he loved me and I loved him that left me speechless whenever I’d focus on it.
It was easy between us. Ever since I’d let go of the past, nothing with Jagger ever felt rushed or too slow. I knew that at no matter what speed we took the rest of our lives, everything would end up feeling the way it had so far. Perfect.
“What are you thinking about so hard?”
I looked up at his curious green eyes, my eyebrows rising in question when I realized I hadn’t actually heard what he’d said. “What?”
“It was like you weren’t here with me for a few minutes. What were you thinking about?”
“Us,” I said without hesitation.
“Yeah? And what about us were you thinking about?”
“Everything.”
“Really?” he said on a laugh. “Anything I should know?”
Looking directly into his eyes, I embraced the tingling feeling that had started in my stomach and quickly expanded throughout my body. I knew that the words that were on the tip of my tongue were exactly what I wanted to say, and I felt light-headed as I realized how true the words were.
“Babe?”
Jagger’s eyes looked panicked for a few seconds then widened with surprise at my next words.
“I want to marry you.”
He blinked a few times, his lips twitching like he didn’t know if he should smile or not. “What did you just say?”
“I want to marry you.”
Before I could register the way his entire face lit up, his mouth was on mine and he was pushing me back onto the bed so he could hover over me. “When?” he asked through our kisses.
“Whenever. I just know that I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”
He pushed himself up so he was on his hands and knees, and I looked at the way his chest rose and fell with each labored breath. “What brought this up?”
I grasped his shaking forearms, and knew they were shaking for the same reason he was breathing so hard. He was trying to control his excitement, but his bright eyes gave him away. “I’ve loved you my entire life. I’ve been in love with you for . . . I don’t know. Years. Whether I knew it or not. But now that I’ve let go of everything that was keeping me stuck in the past, I’ve realized how much time I wasted with you, and I don’t want to waste any more.”
“I would spend forever with you just as long as you were mine, Grey. Don’t say this because you think it’s what we need to do.”
“I’m not,” I promised. “This is what I want as long as you want it too.”
His signature lopsided smile crossed his face and he kissed me again. “Are you kidding?” he growled against my mouth. “Why wouldn’t I want that? I just want to make sure you’ve thought about what you’re saying.”
Pressing a hand to his chest, I pushed him far enough away that I could look at him fully. “I have thought about it. Jagger, I love you, and I want this. I want you. With our past together, and with how unpredictable life is, I want to start this future with you.”
Moving my hand away, he spread my legs with one of his knees to lie down on top of my body. A deep groan sounded in his chest when I wrapped my legs around him and he slowly pressed into me. His mouth cut off my gasp when he began moving inside me, and I gripped him tighter to me when he backed away to look down at me. “Then let’s start that future, Grey.”
Chapter 16
Jagger
September 19, 2014
I WALKED SLOWLY across the grass until I got to the right stone, then squatted down in front of it. For long minutes no words came as I stared at the engraved letters and numbers and tried to figure out the words to explain the hardest thing I’d ever had to say. Grey was working, and I’d just finished having lunch with her dad and asking him the very thing I was trying to say now, but saying it to Mr. LaRue hadn’t seemed nearly as hard as this.
And that didn’t make sense.
I was trying to talk to a slab of marble. It couldn’t respond and it couldn’t give me a judging look. It couldn’t even give me the permission I was looking for and had already been given by Mr. LaRue. But somehow, asking this stone meant more to me than asking anyone else.
“I can’t imagine what you would say to me or think of me if you were here. There are so many times when something happens, or Grey says something, and I can hear what your response would be. Typical Ben bullshit that we all miss. Always trying to reel me in, to stop getting your girl in trouble, to bash my drawings just so I wouldn’t feel like I was the only one who doubted them . . . so much. So much that I know both Grey and I hear clear as day. But this? I can’t begin to guess what you would say. Probably because if you were still here, none of this would be happening.
“Because if you were still here, I know that you’d be furious. I know that you’d do everything in your power to stop me from being with her, and I know that you wouldn’t give her up for anything in the world—because that’s exactly how I feel now that I have her. But when I try to think about it, all I see is you standing there staring at me. Saying nothing, with no emotion on y
our face whatsoever.”
I sat back and rested my elbows on my knees as I continued staring at the stone, memorizing everything about it as I waited for a response that would never come.
“I love her, man. You knew that, but knowing that you knew doesn’t make any of this any easier. I love her and I’m going to take care of her for the rest of my life. I’m going to marry Grey, Ben. I have a ring and I’m going to ask her to take my last name. And you wanna know the fucked-up thing about all of this? It’s that I hate that you won’t be there when I marry her.” I let out a strangled laugh and shook my head. “I hate that my best friend can’t be there on what I know will be the best day of my life so far, and yet you were days away from that exact same day with the exact same girl. Like I said, it’s fucked up. And sitting here telling a piece of stone all this somehow makes it that much worse. If you were here you’d laugh and tell me I’m insane, and God I feel like it . . .” I mumbled the last sentence to myself.
“I wish you could see her. See how much better she’s doing. There were so many times I thought she’d never get past what happened, there were so many times I was terrified that she was destroying herself—just waiting until she could be with you again. Even now, regardless of how much better she is, there are days when it looks like she’s on the edge of going to a place worse than where she ever was. But she’s strong, and I have no doubt she’ll continue to pull herself out of those places, and keep moving. And I’ll always be there with her to help her.
“I feel like I need to ask your permission to marry Grey, that’s why I came here; but I can’t ask a stone. I can’t ask something that has nothing of you other than your name and dates on it. So this is me letting you know what we’re about to do. This is me saying I’m sorry that you can’t have this chance with Grey, and I’m sorry for taking her. This is me telling you that she still loves you, and we all miss you. And this is me promising you I will take care of her and cherish her forever.” Standing up, I took two steps away from the headstone and shoved my hands into my pockets. “You always have been and always will be my best man, Ben. See you.”
Grey
September 20, 2014
THE BED SHIFTED, I felt something heavy settle down on my hips, and my eyes cracked open to find Jagger sitting on me with an unreadable expression on his face. My lips pulled into a lazy smile, and my eyes blinked slowly a few times before I could finally focus on him.
“Interesting way to wake me up considering we’re both fully clothed.”
One side of his mouth curved up, but he didn’t say anything. Leaning forward, he placed a soft kiss on my cheek before doing the same to my lips. I reached up to run my hand over his head, hoping to prolong the kiss, but he pulled back, and my hand slipped to his face.
“You have a little something there,” I teased, and started to brush at the black smudge on his cheek. Then I noticed my left arm.
In my groggy state, it took me a few seconds to realize that, one, it wasn’t a bug; two, it was charcoal; and three, it was the words “WILL YOU . . .”
I mouthed the words a couple times and my heart began racing. My eyes flickered over to Jagger. His face was still unreadable, but his green eyes were full of a mostly hidden excitement. With his eyes locked on mine, he lifted my right arm, and I slowly slid my gaze to it.
And my heart sank.
MAKE BREAKFAST? was there in charcoal on my right forearm.
“Seriously?” I whined, and pushed at his stomach. “You drew on me so you could ask me to make breakfast? You could’ve just woken me up and asked, or waited for me to wake up on my own.”
“So, is that a yes?” he asked earnestly, and I glared at him.
“Fine.”
“That’s not a yes.”
“Yes, Jagger, I will make us breakfast because you are incapable of even pouring a bowl of cereal for yourself.” I tried to stay mad, but that was impossible with Jagger. “You’re such a nerd. I’m getting you cooking lessons for your birthday.”
“It won’t help.”
“One can dream.” Grabbing the back of his neck, I pulled him down to kiss him then pushed him away. “Now get off me so I can make something.”
As soon as he was off the bed, I grumbled something about only making him toast as I climbed off and started walking toward the stairs.
“Seriously, who messes up cerea—” My words and feet immediately stopped when I was two steps down and looking at the ground floor.
My next breath was audible as I took in the sight. Made up of dozens of the thick papers that Jagger used for his drawings was the outline of a large heart, the bottom of which looped around to make the heart also look like an infinity symbol—my name making up the right side of the heart. Inside of the open space was WILL YOU MARRY ME?
Jagger’s arm went around my waist, and his lips went to my ear. “So, is that a yes?” he asked softly as he lifted a ring in front of me.
“Jagger,” I said on a breath, and took the ring from his fingers.
I felt his lips pull into a smile as he placed soft kisses on my neck. “That’s not a yes.”
I turned in his arms and crushed my mouth to his. “Yes, that’s a yes!”
His arm tightened around me as he pressed his lips to mine again and deepened the kiss, and we both grunted when we fell back onto the stairs before laughing—never once stopping the kiss.
Pushing against his chest to lift myself up, I looked into his bright eyes and shook my head to gather myself. “I thought—I thought I’d kind of asked you in Seattle. We’d already talked about it, and—”
“And did you really think I was going to let you take this from me?” His wide smile matched my own, and I tried to figure out how to respond to that before giving up and holding the ring between our faces.
“Are you going to put it on for me?”
“That is part of my job,” he teased, and took it from me. Grabbing my left hand, he slowly slid the ring onto my finger, his green eyes holding mine as he did. “Grey LaRue, will you let me take care of you and love you for the rest of our lives?”
My eyes started watering, and I nodded my head quickly.
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” I choked out, and leaned in to kiss him again, but sat back when I felt him reaching into his pocket.
“Grey, there’s something I’ve wanted to ask you since we were thirteen years old. I will admit I was fucking terrified to ask you; for weeks I tried to say something and it just wouldn’t come out. We’d been best friends for so long by then that I kept thinking I’d lose my friend if I actually asked, so I stopped trying. Then one morning I decided I’d rather ask and risk losing you than never tell you.” His lips tilted up in a quick smile and his eyes shifted down to the folded-up paper in his hand, then up to look at me again. “I knew I’d chicken out again, so I wrote it down to give to you at the dock. But when I got there, I saw Ben kiss you, and when you finally saw me, you ran up to me to tell me that he’d asked you out. You were so excited that I put the paper back in my pocket and never showed it to you . . . but I kept it.”
I wiped at my wet cheeks, and stared at him in amazement. “What is it, Jag?”
With a deep, steady breath, he gave me another tight-lipped smile and handed the paper over. It looked and felt old, and for long seconds I couldn’t open it—I could only stare at it, in disbelief that Jagger had written this more than nine years ago and had kept it all this time. I slowly unfolded the note that had obviously been opened and refolded countless times, and my heart stopped when I read the words.
Can I keep you?
“You were going to give me this the day Ben asked me out?” Jagger nodded and my chin started trembling even harder. “You’d been trying to tell me this, and I’d had no idea. And you kept it all these years? Why didn’t you say something then?”
“It wasn’t our time then,” he said simply.
I hung my head and kept my eyes on the paper. I couldn’t believe what I was
holding, and I couldn’t believe that he’d chosen those words for me. But it shouldn’t have surprised me, this was Jagger we were talking about; and when he started explaining the note, I couldn’t stop smiling even through my tears as the memories came back to me.
“Do you remember when we were nine and you kept watching Casper over and over again . . . and making me watch it with you?” Jagger laughed hesitantly. “I hated that movie because it was like five or six years old, and about a little boy ghost who turned into a teenager, and I thought that was creepy, but you couldn’t seem to get enough of it. But I still watched it with you every time because I loved the way you smiled like Casper was talking directly to you when he asked the girl while she was sleeping if he could keep her. Four years later I still thought about that smile of yours, and even today I can remember how you seemed to melt at that line every time.”
I read the words on the small paper over and over until my tears made it too hard to see. Jagger took the note out of my hands and placed it on the stairs before cupping my cheeks so he could wipe at my tears.
“So, Grey, can I keep you?” he whispered, and a soft sob left me as I threw my arms around him, crushing my body to his.
“Yes. Yes, you can. I love you,” I choked out, and his arms tightened around me.
“I love you too, Grey LaRue.”
He held me there on the stairs as I finished crying and we talked about the movie that I was now dying to watch again—to Jagger’s horror—and started talking about when to get married.
“Oh my God! I need to tell my parents! I need to tell Graham and Janie, and you need to tell Charlie.”
Jagger grinned sheepishly and his eyes squinted like he was somewhat worried about my reaction to something he was about to say. “You mean the people who are going to be at Wake in about half an hour to celebrate with us for breakfast?”
My mouth popped open, and I waited to see if he was going to tell me that he was joking. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, but if you don’t—”
“They’re going to be at Wake? All of them? They knew about this?” I asked rapidly and excitedly.