Page 29 of Cross & Crown
Nick had asked Kelly to marry him not long ago, but
he’d been fresh out of surgery to donate a piece of his liver
to his dying father, and so drugged that Kelly wondered if
Nick remembered anything that had happened that day. He’d
been told after Nick’s surgery that the surgeons had been
forced to give Nick ketamine, which explained why Nick
had hal ucinated for a solid week after he’d gotten out of the
hospital. He’d spent most of it rambling about killing an old
colleague of theirs named Liam Bell and telling Kelly he was
beautiful.
He’d never brought up being engaged, never even panicked
about it. That was what really gave it away, actually. Nick
was notoriously twitchy about commitment. He’d probably
disappear into a puff of smoke that spelled out “nope” in the
air if Kelly told him he’d proposed while drugged.
Kelly hadn’t brought it up again. Just knowing Nick was
thinking permanently while high on Dilaudid and ketamine
was sufficient to make him giddy, and he was willing to wait
until Nick was comfortable enough to bring it up again.
While sober. But hell, they were still living in two different
states, thousands of miles apart. They had bigger issues than
forgotten proposals.
29
Nick interrupted Kelly’s musings by pushing himself up,
leaning his elbow on the mattress at Kelly’s side and placing
his hand over the bullet scar on Kelly’s chest. “We both know
you’d go nuts living on a boat all the time, Kels.”
Kelly swallowed hard, nerves swamping him. Nick really
was going to talk about this, about them living together. “And
you’d go stir-crazy in a cabin in the woods where you couldn’t
