Page 7 of Own the Eights Gets Married
Jordan
He was doing it. He was really doing it.
Right here. Right now.
Down on one knee, he stared into Georgie’s eyes. Not quite blue and not quite green, they weren’t only beautiful. They were the color of his future. The last thing he wanted to see before he went to sleep, and the first thing he wanted to lay his eyes on each morning.
Georgiana Jensen, former Miss Cherry Pie, and the eternal love of his life.
This remarkable woman had made him question everything. She’d peeled past the layers he’d erected around his heart. With her messy bun and her librarian cardigans, she’d blasted through his guise of physical perfection.
It wasn’t like there was anything wrong with working hard or, for that matter, caring for your appearance. But it wasn’t everything. Not even close.
Before Georgie, he’d put so much energy into proving to himself that he was no longer the string bean high school weakling everyone had teased. They’d called him Straws back then, thanks to his long skinny legs. The jocks and the school jerks would stuff his locker full of the cafeteria staple just to laugh and gawk when he opened his locker, and they all tumbled out in a humiliating wave of white paper wrappers.
He’d tried to bury his past and forget that sad, skinny kid. And for nearly a decade, he’d almost done it, thanks to a chance encounter delivering food to a CrossFit gym when he was eighteen. His life changed after the gym owner, Deacon Perry, had taken a shine to him. Through dedication and damn hard work, the string bean boy morphed into a powerful man.
Fifty pounds of pure muscle can do that. And as his body changed, so did his mind. Many of the changes were positive, others were not.
With each pull-up and every deadlift, he endeavored to erase all the signs of his former self and took on a hypermasculine edge to mask the bullied boy within. Instead of honoring the creative and introspective kid he used to be, he began equating bravery with brawn and toughness with physical tenacity. When he’d come up with the idea for the Marks Perfect Ten Mindset blog, he did want to help people reach their personal best. But he also used it to create another layer between himself and that skinny kid from the Colorado plains.
Thanks to Georgie, he could be both the ripped fitness trainer as well as the comic-loving, literature-reading man who wasn’t defined by a number.
He glanced over his shoulder and nodded to Becca. She gave him a thumbs-up then unhooked Mr. Tuesday’s collar.
This was really happening.
Black and white with one ear cocked up while the other drooped down, the dog he’d come to love bounded toward them with a ribbon tied around his neck.
“Jordan is this what I think it is?” Georgie asked as she scratched between the dog’s ears.
“Well, it’s not a segment on selecting the perfect pet for your lifestyle,” he answered, untying the ribbon and sliding an engagement ring off the strip of satin.
“How did you arrange all this?” she asked wide-eyed.
“We can answer that!” Hector exclaimed, taking Bobby’s hand and joining them on set.
Something he was absolutely not expecting as the couple took a seat, one on each side of Georgie.
“Jordan came to us and asked about how we got engaged, and then it snowballed from there,” Hector, the more outspoken of the power couple, explained.
“We shared with Jordan how I had brought Hector to our favorite bench, hidden away in the Denver Botanic Gardens, and asked him to be my husband and partner for life, surrounded by tulips and the buzz of bees,” Bobby answered softly.
“It was so romantic. So intimate,” Hector gushed.
Jordan caught Georgie’s gaze. “This is kind of the opposite of intimate.”
Georgie leaned to the side as a cameraman pushed in and entered their personal space. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“But a proposal on morning TV is completely apropos for CityBeat’s most-watched and adored couple,” Hector answered.
“That’sWake-Up Denver,” the host injected with a grin so wide she looked as if she belonged in a scary clown movie.
Shit! This whole idea sounded perfect when he’d spoken with Bobby and Hector. Now, with the cameras and the lights, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d made the wrong call.
He glanced between the men. “Do you guys mind if I,” he began, then held up the ring.
Hector nodded. “The engagement ring! We can’t forget that!”
