Page 49 of Brooklyn Bratva

Thankfully my guy was up for helping out. Becca smiled when I took the seat next to her again.

“You missed the show!”

“I’ll live. Let’s get out of here. I want to show you something else.”

Becca

Ivan lead the way to his car and held the door open for me so I could slide into the passenger seat beside him. The day had slipped away from us at the aquarium but I wasn’t ready to go back to Mama’s yet.

And it looked like Ivan had other plans too.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Really? What if I don’t like surprises?”

His eyes drifted to mine, glancing away from the traffic, one hand resting at the top of the steering wheel. “You’ll like this.”

“Is there going to be food involved?”

“Of course.”

He made me stay in the car when he pulled into a food market I’d never been to before. When he came back he had a couple of bags, that went onto the back seat, and a bunch of pink roses that he presented me with.

“Where am I going to put them?” I protested, flustered from the glow rushing through me at how sweet he was being. In all my daydreams, he’d been the perfect gentleman, and in reality it was only better.

“They’ll last until you get home. You like them?”

“Ivan they’re beautiful. No one has ever given me flowers except my Dad.”

“Good,” he said, and I got the sense he really meant it. It was a good thing I’d never had a boyfriend, because I was pretty sure Ivan would make them regret ever touching me.

I’d never been so far west of Coney Island and my interest was peaked, because pretty soon we were going to run out of land.

The area was a mishmash of older streets, mostly residential and there was no reason I could think of why Ivan was taking us out this way. Until I saw the thin white tower of the Coney Island lighthouse peeking through the rooftops and recollections of a school trip in grade school filtered in.

“We’re going to the lighthouse?” I looked across to him with narrowed eyes.

Ivan shrugged. “I know somebody in the coast guard.”

Of course he did. I was beginning to realize Ivan knew someone who could do something for him in nearly every part of Brooklyn. I grinned. “We’re going up?”

“That’s the plan.”

He parked the car and we walked the narrow lighthouse steps, right to the top of the lantern tower. The sky was turning pink as we got to the top, the sun out ahead of us, over the sea, burning bigger and rounder as it dropped down towards the horizon.

The lamp in the middle was starting to warm up and the intensity of the beam that flashed out as it spiralled around was immense, casting our stretched out shadows over the water.

When I looked back, Ivan was popping the cork on a bottle of champagne. I actually felt my eyes light up, and my jaw hinged open with surprise. “What’s this?”

Ivan poured me a glass and the bubbles raced up the sides, spilling out and splattering on the aluminum safety flooring like all the passion between us couldn’t be contained. I felt the same way. “To the start of many, many years together. To love.”

I had to press my lips together to stop from tearing up, and I took a sip, choking inelegantly on the fierce tickle of bubbles against my throat. I never thought I’d ever really hear him say something like that to me and mean it. But here he was saying it, and I was wide awake.

“To us. You love me?”

Ivan touched his glass to mine and tipped it up to take a mouthful. In his hand the narrow glass seemed thimble-like. “Becca. How can you ask me that? You’ve come into my life and changed everything. You stitched me up and saved my life. Yes, I love you. And I want us to be together. This is only the start of that.”

Butterflies exploded in my stomach when he leaned down to kiss me, and I pushed up on my toes to meet him, my hand cupping his stubbled jaw to bring his mouth completely in against mine.

“I want that too. So much.”

“Good. We’ll make it happen.”

We sat up in the lighthouse tower until it got dark, eating the picnic Ivan had bought and drinking more champagne and it felt like I was getting everything I’d ever wanted. My heart was so full it could have burst right out of my chest.

“This was the perfect day, Ivan.”

I watched him shrug it off, like pulling this off was nothing, but there was a glint in his eye that told me it was what he wanted to hear. “It’s only what you deserve.”

CHAPTER 26

Ivan

The message came through to my phone when we were just getting back to Mama’s place. I was to meet our man at the airport the next day.

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