Page 107 of Even if You Fall

My head dipped in acknowledgment as I tried making my throat work because every part of me knew what I said then would be the most important words of my life.

“Tell me you’ll marry me right here, right now, and I’ll gladly make it happen,” I began, the words thick and weighted. “Tell me in a week that you want to elope, and we will, and it’ll be the best day of my life.” I nodded again before slanting my head. “But as content as I was at the thought of never getting married, that was before you. And, Chloe, I desperately want to wait at the end of an aisle, just so I can watch you walk toward me, knowing I get to marry you when you reach me.”

Tears built in her eyes as she stared at me, and a soft sob broke from her when I signed,Open it.

She threw her arms around my neck instead, pressing her lips to mine in a kiss that was all excitement and love and passion, and didn’t last nearly long enough.

But then she was shakily unwrapping the box, and I was sliding the ring onto her finger as I asked, “So, would marrying me be the craziest idea?”

“It just might be,” she whispered as she looked up at me, her eyes bright with tears and affection. “But I can’t wait to marry you.”

Curling my hand around the side of her neck, I pressed my thumb under her jaw and tipped her head back to better search her face. “This the real you, Bubbles?”

A muted sound that was part laugh, part cry tumbled free at the familiar question, and she reached up to grip my wrist. “What do you think?”

Pressing my forehead to hers, I let our lips brush when I answered, “That I love the real you.”

“It can’t be real. Right?”

I glanced at Monroe’s horrified and infuriated expression, then let my stare shift back to the paper in front of us that may as well have offended her, and her entire family line from the way she’d woken me up with an impressive slap that’d made my head scream in protest.

That also could’ve been the hangover.

Scrubbing a hand over my face, I willed the pounding of my head to subside, then tried focusing on the wording and signatures filling out the paper.

But no matter how many times I read it, I kept coming back to the same conclusion.

The paper signed by us and an officiant, plus waking up in bed next to the woman I’d spent over a decade loving, equaled we’d eloped.

In Aruba.

“Looks real,” I said on a sigh, and was a second too slow when she swung at me.

Her fingers just barely clipped the side of my head, but with the sudden movement exasperating my head’s relentlesspounding, I would’ve sworn I’d just taken a punch from an MMA fighter.

“What’d you do?” she snapped.

“Me?” I shot back as I gripped her forearm, stopping her next hit. “Your signature’s on there too.”

“But I—” A panicked sound left her. “I would’ve never. I mean, I don’t even remember—and it’syou.”

“Wow, thanks, Princess,” I muttered sarcastically, dropping her arm. “Tell me how you really feel.”

Her eyes narrowed accusatorily. “How could you let this happen?”

“Ididn’t,” I informed her. “Last thing I remember is being at the reception.” Which was actually pretty sad considering Briggs and Lainey had gotten married midday.

“No, we went to the bar when it ended,” she said as if I should’ve known.

I held out my arms, then stepped back to sit on the bed.Herbed because this wasn’t my hotel room I’d woken up in. “News to me.”

“Don’t do that,” she snapped, reaching for the strewn clothes covering the desk chair, and launching the first thing she touched at me. An infuriated sound left her when I caught it before it could hit my face. “Justoncecould you let something hit you?”

I was too caught on the object in my hand to respond—not her stiletto or my shirt from the wedding. I let those fall to the floor.

But the simple gold band . . .

Something about that ring made this all that much more real. My breathing turned shallow as I looked at Monroe, at her bare fingers, then quickly down at my own hand. But there was nothing there.

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