Page 119 of The Proposal Pact
Sucks for her, I didn’t spend half my life in the Navy for nothing.
“Callum? What are you doing, honey?” I hear my mother shout, evidently still partying at LPs at this time of night.
“Not now, Mom,” I yell back just as Sophie’s feet hit the sand and she lets out a shrill shriek when she realizes I’m gaining fast on her, especially running on the beach. Bad move, wifey. This is my turf.
“Gotcha, little menace!” I grin when she’s a few feet away from me.
“In your dreams!” she spits out, defensive and comparative to her core, making me laugh.
She does that a lot. Make me laugh, I mean. She does it, when I nearly forgot how that felt. She does it, when I all but started to hate the sound.
Laughing wasn’t part of my life plan any more than feeling the warmth of another person, sharing a bed with someone else or fucking like rabbits every damn day, yet here we are.
None of this was a part of the plan. None. But an unpleasant burn starts inside my chest at the thought of losing it.
In the past few weeks, ever since she took a knife to my control and shredded it, I wasn’t able to stay away from Sophie. Not for a moment. Not for a day.
And it’s not just sex, damn it. It’s not that at all, because I find myself looking for her pops of color everywhere I turn. I find my ears listening for her infectious laugh that she gifts the world with so freely. I run home to watch the game with her because seeing her expressive emotions is the highlight of my day. I make detours half ways across the town for her favorite foods and now I can even fall asleep with her freezing feet underneath my leg!
And it scares the shit out of me. All of it!
It scares me more than any mission I’ve had as a Seal over the course of sixteen years.
So, what the fuck am I supposed to do with it all now?
My eyes settle on the girl who pulled me into this insanity. From laughing to fucking and I’m ready to tackle her sweet ass down, when all of the sudden she screams, “Clover! I lost my panties!”
“What?” I shriek and stop, looking around the sand for the neon scrap of material. How did she manage to lose—Sophie’s ringing laughter cuts off my thought and I look up, seeing her sprinting far away, her hair swooshing around, those damn panties peeking out from underneath her jersey and two middle fingers raised high above her head.
“Lord have mercy on your ass when I catch you,” I call into the night and take off after her again. This time I’m not playing around. But if I thought she’d yield when she saw she was about to lose, I was dead fucking wrong.
This little menace takes a sharp left and starts climbing up the rocky hill that surrounds this part of the beach and leads to the Loverly Cave itself.
Where the hell did she learn to do that?
“Sophie, get down from there! I caught you. That’s it.” I stop, my hands on my hips, panting slightly after that chase as I watch her climbing even higher.
Jesus Christ, how can she even see anything right now? Sure, the moon is almost full and bright, but not that bright.
“Do you see your arms around me? Because I sure as heck don’t. So I win.”
“Sophie! That’s too high, get down from that rock.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Jesus Christ.” I sigh, rubbing a hand over my face as my heart starts to race for a whole other reason, worry. “Fine, you win, now get down.”
“Nope.”
“What do you mean,nope? I just told you, you won.”
“I knew I won without you saying it, but I’m still not climbing down.”
That little brat…
“And why the hell not?”
She’s quiet—too quiet—for a beat. “I can’t,” shefinally admits.
