Page 91 of Dallas

He grips my face, kisses my mouth. “I want you to live with me,” he says. “And I know I shouldn’t say that. If you need to live on your own, I respect that. If you need distance. I’ll let you have it. But I don’t want to give it to you. I want you to live with me.”

“I don’t want distance either,” I say. “I want us.”

“I want you to marry me.”

“I want that,” I whisper, emotions making my words thick. “I do. I don’t care if it seems healed or healthy or balanced, because we don’t need to be anyone else. There’s no guidebook for surviving the shit that we’ve survived. There’s just this.”

He shudders, and he continues to move inside me, andmy own climax hits me like a freight train. He goes over, his head falling back on a guttural sound as he comes deep inside me.

“I’ll pay for you to go to school,” he whispers against my neck. And you can’t complain about it. You have to let me. You have to let me take care of you. It’s what I want.”

I touch his face, the water running down his skin. “You have to let me take care of you. Because it’s what I want.”

“I will,” he says. He holds my chin, his eyes gazing deep into mine. All I see is blue. “Sweetheart, I’ve had so many good things over the last decade, but it was never quite right. Because there was never you. It’s like there was a missing piece. And now here you are.”

I’m not afraid anymore. I just trust him. I’m choosing it. To dive headlong into this whether it’s logical or not, to forget that I’ve ever been hurt. To forget that life is scary, because I want Dallas more than I want anything.

I imagine myself standing on a precipice, over a magma-filled volcano, a gold ring in my hand, representing every trauma, every issue that I’ve ever had. And I picture myself just letting it go. So that I can hold onto Dallas. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Dallas

It’s harder to complete all my championship rituals when my mind is firmly fixed on what will happen afterward. Win or lose, I have a plan.

And something burning a hole in my pocket.

I don’t intend to lose tonight. My family is in the stands, my dad, my mom, Lucy and Cara.

Sarah.

My whole world is out there. I just have to complete this one ride. One ride, and I win a million dollars, and I know exactly what I’m going to do with that money. The land I’m getting, for me, for her.

One ride, and I can finally claim world champion status.

It’ll be my last ride. I’ve already decided. Win or lose.

I’m no gladiator in an arena. I’m not romanticizing risking my life, not anymore.

My heart is pounding hard, and I climb into the chute and onto the back of the bull. He jerks beneath me, and Islip my hand beneath the leather strap, adjusting, adjusting, trying to make sure that everything is right.

I imagine my family. And then, just like I always do, I think of Sarah. Only this time, she’s not some distant fantasy. This time, she is not something I lost a long time ago.

This time, she’s mine.

The chute opens, and the bull runs out. Spinning, tossing, turning. This is my last ride, and I’m the last of the night. The score I have to get to win is huge. If it’s not me, it’s going to be Maverick Quinn. I don’t have the stomach for that. But if I lose, he goes home the champion, but he’s still him.

And I get to go home.

I picture her face as I hang on, as the bull tries his level best to end me. Then the timer passes eight seconds, and I leap off the animal. I know the score is going to come up. But I don’t even look. Instead, I look up in the stands, I look to see where Sarah is, right on the railing, looking down at me, cheering. And I run straight to her. Run straight up the wall, climb the railing, and make my way to her. Then I reach into my pocket, and I take out the ring box.

Something I picked out with Sammy’s help. Because she knows exactly what Sarah likes.

We had a lot of talks about what she needs to do in life, how she wants to finish school, how she wants to work for a few years in social work before she has kids, and I’m on the same page. But this, this we both decided we didn’t have to wait on.

I open the box, and get down on one knee.

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