Page 51 of Snagged By Hook

“There were things Brent said that add up with what you’ve told me. Casey stole him years ago and started a new business model. He sent him out to have kids of his own, so they didn’t have to risk taking kids anymore. Brent snapped and killed him.”

“I can’t.” Hook threw off the comforter and started to pace. “It’s too convenient. This is real life, not a movie that gets wrapped up all nice and tidy before the credits roll. Life is messy, Nova. I’m messy...broken. I don’t know?—”

Hook didn’t realize Nova had left the bed until he turned and almost ran into her. She stood in front of him with the sheet wound around her. His breath sawed in and out as he stared down into her face. Eyes glittering with love. He watched her every move as she raised her hands to his cheeks.

“You’re not broken, Hook. Just a little dinged up.” She rose up on her toes and dropped a gentle kiss on his lips. “Just because you’ve not had many things work out before, you don’t trust it. I get that, but trustme. I wouldn’t lie to you. I promise you the things he said make me believe with my whole heart he wasn’t lying about killing Casey.”

Hook didn’t know what to say, she was fucking right. He never trusted when things were going well, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. But she wasn’t asking him to trust the situation; she was asking him to trust her. The only people he’d trusted since Casey were his club brothers.

“If you’re not ready to trust me yet.” She dropped her hands and cast her eyes to where she picked at one of her nails. “My phone’s on the sink. It was recording the whole time.”

Nova turned from him. “I really wish you wouldn’t listen to it. There are things I’m ashamed for you to hear—things you can’t unhear but will wish you could. I would love it if you could just trust me, but I understand if you can’t.”

The hurt in her voice was killing him. He wanted to trust her. He wanted to remove those notes of sadness from her voice, but could he?

This was a moment, a very crucial moment. It would not only set the tone for any type of relationship they could have moving forward, it would also define him as a man, the type of human being he was going to be.

If he couldn’t give her his trust in this, he would never be close enough to another person to call what he would live a life.

Hook took a tentative step toward her back, and then another. With a shaky hand, he reached out and brushed her hair aside and dropped a kiss on the nape of her neck.

“You, Nova. I trust you. I don’t have to hear it, it’s enough for me that you say it’s so.” Until he spoke the words, he feared they weren’t one hundred percent true. Once they were said, gravity lost its ability to hold him down, and the past relinquished its power to pull him backward.

She turned in his arms, and that’s when he saw it. Everything he was and ever wanted to be in her eyes.

“I love you so fucking much.” He kissed her, and she laughed.

“I fucking love you.”

Kiss.

Laugh.

“I mean it. I love you, Nova. I’ll never let you go. Once you’ve been snagged by Hook, you stay snagged for good.”

Kiss.

Laugh.

“And now that you’ve snagged me, what are you going to do with me?”

“Take you to bed and make you scream my name, of course.”

He picked her up and tossed her back on the bed with a bounce.

NOVA

EPILOGUE

“Jeremy, don’t look,” June pleaded as she tried to hide the cake she’d worked on all morning.

“Yeah, Jeremy, don’t look,” Nova mocked and stuck out her tongue.

“Fine, but the natives are getting restless. Croon and Squatch have to get on the road to Canada, but they want cake first.” He pitched his voice behind him. “The thought of serenading Vicious makes Croon a hungry boy.” Hook laughed.

“Shut up, TAW,” Croon shouted from the other room. “I lost by fifty-seven minutes. I’m still counting it as a win.”

“CROON!” Nova scolded from the kitchen, and Hook raised an eyebrow to her.

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