Page 112 of Beautiful Betrayal

“I shouldn’t have let you leave. But we’ve talked about this. We have to put it behind us. It’s in the past.”

“No,” I say. “No. It’s not. We’re both still terrified of the damage our break-up did to us. I’m afraid you’ll wake up and hate me for leaving. You’re afraid I’ll leave because I already left. That part of you that has lost everyone you love will never fully trust me not to leave again.”

He looks away and that cut of his gaze guts me. I start to stand and he catches my wrist, his eyes meeting mine again. “I trust you like I’ve never trusted anyone, even my father because you know all those inner parts of me that I show no one else. And you still love me.”

My heart squeezes and I press my palm to his cheek. “And you know mine. You know I will never leave again.”

“Then elope with me.”

“You say that like I need to elope with you to prove that I won’t leave.”

His hands go to my waist and he pulls me close. “Elope with me because you can’t wait any more than I can wait. That doesn’t mean we can’t have our big wedding. It just means we spend the holidays as husband and wife.”

“I don’t know if I should say yes or no. I want you to believe in me and us enough to trust that I’ll still be here on the day we set that wedding date. But I also want you to know that I don’t want to wait either. I want to be your wife.”

“Did you know that my mother and father eloped?”

Her brows furrow. “But I saw the photos.”

“That’s what I said when my father told me. They’d broken up, like us, over my father’s secretary.”

I sit up. “What?”

He catches my hand and pulls me back down on the cushion, his hand settling on my hip, his leg twined with my leg. “He didn’t cheat, baby. It was similar to what happened to us. Mom was jealous of his secretary. He was upset she didn’t trust him. They were apart for six months. When they finally came back together, he wasn’t giving her the chance to believe there was any woman for him but her. They eloped and then planned their wedding.”

This explains so much. “Was that his idea or hers?”

“He didn’t say, but I got the impression it was his.”

Emotions expand in my chest, so many emotions. “You really want to do this, don’t you?”

He inhales a breath and looks skyward, seeming to struggle with his own emotions, a rare thing for this man, before he levels me in a turbulent stare. “I need you to marry me now. It’s not about trust. It’s about needing my woman, my best friend, my life, to be my wife. It’s not about you leaving, it’s about you not living another day that could be your last or my last, and not being my wife. Marry me because we need to be husband and wife.”

Those words hit me like a wrecking ball. He’s not worried about me leaving. He knew Ri for years. He just saw him lying lifeless in a stairwell, but more so, he saw him holding a gun to my head. Grayson tried to get Ri to shoot him to save me. He’s afraid we’ll end this life without ever being husband and wife. If I say yes, though, I’m giving in to that fear. I’m feeding that fear. A thought slides into my mind and I go with it. “How about a compromise?”

“Meaning what?”

“I’m not sure I want a big wedding-”

“No, baby. I want you to have your dream wedding. This isn’t a this or that.”

“Hear me out, please,” I say, the influence his father had on this decision and his life in my mind now, feeding this idea. “There is so much press right now. Grayson Bennett’s wedding will be TMZ-worthy all over again.”

“I want the world to know I’m marrying you, Mia.”

My heart squeezes and I press my hand to his jaw. “And I love you for that, but what I’d love is to have a ceremony on New Year’s Eve at the house with the tree still up. That way your father is there in spirit.”

“What about the lighthouse?”

“It’ll be too cold for the lighthouse, but when everyone leaves, we can escape to be there together, our private place, alone. I can still wear my dress. It will be small and intimate and special.”

He searches my face. “You really like this idea?”

“I love this idea. I can’t believe we didn’t think of it before now. It’s still a fast turnaround with Thanksgiving only two weeks away, but it’s the perfect way to start a new year together. My only negative is the three months won’t be over. But it will be close and we could lock ourselves away here for the last two weeks, just you and me. And this makes this our story, not your parents’ story. What do you think?”

He studies me for several more beats, his green eyes warm before he molds me to him. “Yes. Let’s get married on New Year’s Eve in the Hamptons house.”

I smile a genuine ear-to-ear grin. “Then I want to go look at my dress. I’m actually dying to see it right now. I never saw the final dress after alterations.” My brows furrow. “You haven’t seen it, right? That’s bad luck.”

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