Page 20 of Nice to Meet Boo
The words hang between us like a promise. My eyes sting. I laugh, shaky. “You better bring whipped cream.”
“I’ll bring two cans,” he says, voice low.
Then his mouth is on mine.
This kiss isn’t for a contest. It isn’t for a crowd. It’s ours.
And when we finally break apart, foreheads pressed together, I know without doubt: the saint and the sinner found exactly what they didn’t know they needed.
EPILOGUE
GRANT
The bar hasn’t changed much in a year—same strings of orange lights, same paper bats sagging from the rafters, same sticky spot near the jukebox Cyrus swears he’s mopped a hundred times.
But I’ve changed.
I’m not the man who walked in here last Halloween planning to drink one beer and get out. I’m not the man who thought he was safer alone. Not anymore.
Tonight I’m a mouse. Which is humiliating, sure, but worth it to see Stacey in her glittery black cat ears, tail swishing every time she glances over her shoulder and smirks at me like she’s already won.
“You make a pretty good prey animal,” she teases as we squeeze through the crowd.
I lean down, brush a kiss over her temple. “I’d let you catch me any day.”
Her grin softens into something that still knocks me sideways. It always does.
Cyrus eyes us from behind the bar, shaking his head.
“Couples costumes again? You two are ridiculous.”
But he slides us two drinks without waiting for an order. He’s been rooting for this since the beginning, even if he’ll never admit it.
We don’t sign up for the contest this time. Stacey waves the clipboard off with a laugh.
“We’ve already got our trophy.” She flashes her left hand, a little Angel ring we won from one of those prize machines on a road trip we took last summer. It catches the light from above.
She loves that damn cheap plastic thing.
But she deserves more. She deserves a diamond. A real one that was fitted just for her and won’t make her fingers turn green if she wears it for more than an hour.
She deserves the real ring her sister-in-law, Heidi, helped me pick out with her brother’s blessing.
The ring that is burning a hole in my pocket right now.
“Wanna go for a walk down Main Street?” I murmur.
Her eyes sparkle. “Deja vu?”
“Something like that.”
I lead her toward the door, to the place where it all started. My pulse pounds harder than it should for a man who’s about to do the most certain thing of his life.
At the threshold to the door, she turns to face me, about to say something playful, when I pull the small velvet box from my jacket pocket.
Her breath stutters. “Grant…”
I drop to one knee. Not because the crowd has turned to watch. Not because Cyrus is already cursing under his breath about proposals in his bar.
