Page 74 of Break Me Like a Promise (Oak Valley)

“Ruby Delacey, I saw you when we were thirteen years old, in Mrs. Kocsis’ science class. I fell in love with you on the spot, but it wasn’t until the next year when we finally started dating. I thought I knew what love was — who at fourteen doesn’t? — but every day you showed me how very wrong I was, and how much deeper we could go. You challenged me and accepted me, loved me and helped me grow. I never for the life of me understood what you saw in me, and when we were eighteen, it broke me when I realized that what you’d seen in me was more premonition than reality. But here we are, ten years later. And Ruby Delacey, I have known all that time that I was in love with you, would always be in love with you. You are the love of my life. I don’t need you to give me an answer — I just want you to know that I would give my life to give you the life you deserve, every day, and that it would be an honor to marry you.”

Her hand had gone to her mouth around the halfway mark of his speech, tears slipping down her cheeks blooming pink.

“Ask me.”

It was hardly a whisper, but he didn’t need her to repeat it. He saw it in her eyes, the way the corners of her mouth were turned up.

“Ruby Delacey, would you allow me the honor of becoming your husband? Will you marry me?”

She nodded, ferociously, and dropped to her knees before him. Her soft hands cupped his face, pulling him into a kiss that consumed him, burned him to the bone until he was ash against her. She had always been a part of him, but now he knew he had always been a part of her. They found each other, again, and Colton knew that they would continue to do so in every moment, every lifetime.

She was his heart and his soul.

EPILOGUE

Dragan whooped and hollered as Colton got engaged, kissing his future wife while they kneeled in the parking lot, surrounded by the entire town at the Valentine’s Day Festival. He brushed up against June, his body heating without hesitation. He glanced down at the curvy blonde, his best friend, and wondered:

What would it feel like to kiss her full lips?

To feel her body pressed against his, not in friendship but in love?

To hold her wide hips in his hands, showing her he could protect her from the world?

To wake up to her every morning, knowing, without a doubt, she was the love of his life, and she knew it, too?

Tears were streaming down her cheeks. He knew they were of happiness, but that didn’t stop the need to wipe them away from rising through him, threatening to break free in a kiss that would surely, horrendously end their friendship.

But… What if it didn’t?

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