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

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