by Parker, Ali
I laughed. “I’m not going to dinner if you keep it up.”
He tugged at my hips to force me to turn toward him, and I lifted my arms and let the dress fall down to cover me up. It barely hit the tops of my knees and left me feeling beautiful.
“I love it,” I said.
He slid his hands up my thighs, taking the dress with him, and leaned in to press his mouth to my center in a long string of kisses that made my knees weak.
“And I love you.” He kissed me once more and stood up. “Don’t even think for a minute that you’re going to your mother’s without me. I’m spending the night in your arms. Period.”
“She hates you.” I tugged the dress back down and gave him a sympathetic smile.
“I love a good challenge.” He kissed me and brushed his hand down my hair.
“I thought you wanted to see your dad?”
“We had to reschedule,” Caden said. “Let me change my shirt and let’s go. I can’t wait to see Jake, and I know he can’t wait to see you.”
“He doesn’t hate me?” I asked and followed him out into the living room.
“Hell no. He’s always been on your side, like a fucking cheerleader in my ear for the last six years.” He laughed and warmth engulfed me. We belonged together. I had no doubt.
“Then I owe him a debt of gratitude.”
“Just a smile will work. No one gets anything from you but me from here on out.” He winked and turned to walk back into his bedroom.
“So bossy.” I dropped down on the couch and let out a content sigh.
“You like it.”
“I do.”
Chapter 32
Caden
“Well, look at what the cat dragged in!” Jake walked toward us as we entered the old Catfish Barn at the edge of the city. His dark hair and Italian looks had half the room turning to look his way. He was the only man I knew that had a heart of gold. I couldn’t have had a better friend in life.
“Hey, buddy.” I shook his hand and turned my attention to the petite brunette woman by his side. “You must be Kari. I’m Caden. It’s nice to finally meet you. This guy hasn’t shut up about you in the last year.”
Kari had a brilliantly white smile with big teeth and full lips. She had wide-set eyes and dramatically arched eyebrows. She was a beautiful woman, and when she tipped her head back to gaze up at Jake, I could see the love in her eyes.
“It’s not been that long, has it?” Kari asked.
Jake chuckled. “Time flies when you’re with the right person, love.”
Kari giggled and then gave me her attention once more. “I’m so glad we were able to finally meet, Caden. Jake never shuts up about you. And you must be Olivia.”
Olivia moved up beside my right shoulder. Kari held out her hand, but Jake beat her to it and stepped in to gather Olivia in a fierce, tight hug.
“I missed you, Desmant,” he said.
Olivia wheezed as he pushed the air out of her lungs. “I missed you too.”
I tapped Jake’s shoulder. “She can’t breathe, man.”
Jake released Olivia, who let Kari take her by the hand and pull her toward their table.
“How are you, buddy?” Jake pulled me into a brotherly hug and patted my back. “You doing better?”
“Yeah, lots better. I went over to Dad’s today and picked this old thing up.” I pulled the little pale pink box from my jeans pocket. “Remember this shit?”
He smirked and took it before turning his back on the girls as if to block our secret. “Are you giving her this?”
“Yeah, as a promise ring or something. I know she’s not ready for much more than that.” I shrugged. I would’ve asked her to marry me in a heartbeat, but she needed time to heal from Luke.
“I think that’s a great idea.” He handed me the ring back and shook his head. “Who would have thought this would be the ending?”
“Ending? Fuck that. This is only the beginning.” I glanced around him to find Kari and Olivia laughing together. “I wanna enjoy each day with her.”
“You got a lot of clean up to do thanks to Luke, my man.” He patted me on the back and nodded toward the bar. “Let’s get some beers and catch up. Dinner is on me.”
“Nah, it’s on me. I make ten times what you do, but one day, you’ll be buying because I’ll be a poor ranch boy with ten kids and a simple life.”
“If that’s what you want, then go get it.” He walked with me to the bar, filling me in on his parents and the talk of the town as of late, which was nothing too crazy.
Football, drama, and scandal. Sounded like a fine life to me.
* * *
“Where are we going?” Olivia glanced over at me as I turned down a long dirt road and smiled. She must not have been home in the last year or so. They’d built up a new back road system from the city to the country, and at the end of it was our old football stadium where we played all our games.
“You’ll see. Stop being so inquisitive. What are you, an investment advisor?” I smirked and reached for her hand as her face fell.
“I was.” She shrugged. “I’m going to break up with Luke when we get back to New York.”
“Good. You don’t need him.” I squeezed her hand as elation ran through me. Step one in having her forever was just around the corner. “Now we need to either find you a new job or get your old job back at Tangling. You tell me what you want to do and I’ll pull every string I can. I have lots of connections.”
“I’m not sure what I want to do just yet. I might stick around at your firm just to put the emotional pressure on him.” She shrugged.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Why do I find that incredibly sexy?”
“Because you’re a horny guy with a cute cheerleader on your arm? A blonde cheerleader that’s just trying to play with the big boys.”
“Hush, you bad thing. You knew I was just baiting you that night at Kadia. I needed to reel you in, and I knew slapping your pride would win me at least another round of fighting if nothing else.” I smiled and lifted her fingers to my mouth to suck on the tip of one.
She moaned softly and reached over to brush her fingers down my leg. “Maybe we will break into the old locker room? Make love on one of those weight benches.”
“I thought you didn’t know where—” I glanced over at her and grumbled. “You’re such a cheeky thing.”
“That, I am.” She moved back to her seat and crossed her arms over her chest. “I can’t believe how badly I let all that shit from our senior year get so blown out of proportion. It ruined everything inside of me over the last six years.”
“I did too, but maybe we needed this time to grow into two people that could really appreciate each other. Maybe it wouldn’t have worked any other way.” I pulled into the parking lot and turned off the lights. “Let’s just talk about the really great times we had back then. Not the one moment in all of it that fucked us over.”
“Deal.” She got out of the car and walked around to the front before reaching up and pulling her hair into some type of ponytail.
I wrapped my arm around her back and moved her with me to the edge of the field.
“You know what one of my favorite memories of high school was?” I pulled her closer and slipped off my shoes. She did the same.
“What, baby?” She wrapped her arm around my back and glanced up at me.
“That cheer competition you guys had when Danny hurt his back.” I started to laugh. I couldn’t help myself. “So you needed someone to fill in.”
“And you said you would, but only if I didn’t wear my bloomers?” She popped me in the chest and walked out on the field ahead of me.
I laughed a little more and jogged to catch up with her. “But you were a good girl.”
“Was, past tense.” She turned toward me and slid her hands up my chest. “I wanted to tease the hell out of you that day, but I figured I would end up in the air above someone else, and no one deserved to see the goods.”
; “No one but me?” I brushed my fingers down the side of her cheek, memorizing how incredibly beautiful she was. My heart was hers no matter what happened from that moment on. I couldn’t pull it back again if I had to.
“No one but you.” She lifted to her toes and kissed me a few times. “Not much has changed.”
“I like it.” I pulled the box out of my pocket and took a step back as her hands slid down my chest. “This is what I was talking about. It wasn’t much back then, and it certainly isn’t now, but maybe it could be a promise between us.”
I popped it open and extended it to her. She nodded and reached for the box. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips, and she reached into the box and gently plucked the ring from its velvet valley. “I love it, Caden.”
“Maybe it can be that we promise each other that we’ll see where this thing between us can lead. That while we’re together, we’ll be one hundred percent true to each other.” I ran my hand up her arm and over her shoulder to hold the base of her head softly in my hand.
She slipped the ring on and smiled up at me. “I like this a lot. Let’s just take things slow and see what happens. No promises other than the ones you’ve mentioned and this one, that even if we don’t end up together that I’ll love you forever.”
I nodded, wanting to correct her and knowing that there was no point. I didn’t need a solid commitment just yet. Love would bind us together. It had for the last six years while we were apart and for the entirety of my childhood. It would persevere and hold on tight when we weren’t capable of doing it ourselves.
“I’ll love you forever too, baby.” I pulled her close to me and smiled. “Even if it is risky business to do it.”
She pulled me down for a long slow kiss before we dropped down into the wet grass beneath us and laughed until our sides hurt from old stories.
She was mine for the moment, and honestly, that was all that mattered.
Chapter 33
Olivia
My mother pulled my left hand into her lap and turned it from side to side, admiring the gold band and diamond upon my ring finger.
She peered up at me from behind her cat-eye-shaped white-framed glasses. “He gave you this last night?”
I nodded.
I’d filled my mom in on everything that had happened over the last few weeks. I told her about Luke and how I’d been ready to say yes to a proposal. And then I explained how everything had blown up in front of my face and now Caden was back in my life and I had the very ring he planned on proposing to me with on my finger, taunting me.
“It’s quite lovely,” my mother admitted, relinquishing my hand.
I drew it back into my lap and stared at it as I had been all morning. “I know. I can only imagine how I would have reacted if he gave me this when he planned to. On graduation.”
“Your father would have blown a fuse.”
I laughed. It was true. Daddy wouldn’t have approved. He approved of Caden, sure, but he wouldn’t have been too thrilled by the idea of us wanting to get married fresh out of high school. He’d have told us to wait. To savor the moment. To live a little before we let ourselves fall into that next step.
But I wasn’t falling into it now.
I was racing headfirst into it.
My mother leaned back in her seat. We were sitting on the outdoor wrought-iron set on the back patio. Bees buzzed lazily in the garden at the edge of the patio stones and a small spider dangled from a web by my knee. I reached out, wrapped my finger in his web, and gently lowered him to the ground.
“So I assume this means you and Luke are over?” My mother cocked her head to the side and sipped her iced tea.
“I haven’t actually ended it with him yet. I wanted to do it in person. So when we go back to New York the day after tomorrow, I’ll sit him down.”
“Don’t murder him, all right? I know he betrayed you, but in a way, he set you free too. He let you find the man you’ve loved all this time.”
“Luke is an asshole.”
My mother chuckled softly. “Yes, I’m not defending him. But he is Caden’s brother and family has always been very important to that boy. It would be a shame if this was something they couldn’t get past. So long as you two are being smart and waiting until you have the conversation, I don’t see any permanent harm being done.”
I looked at my lap.
I hadn’t confessed the truth of it all and told her Caden and I had slept together several times in the past forty-eight hours. I knew what she’d say. She’d be disappointed. She’d remind me that I wasn’t that kind of person. She’d make me feel all the things I already felt tenfold.
I didn’t want to be the woman who stood between two brothers. Even though Luke was a downright piece of garbage for cheating on me, I knew he was still Caden’s brother and they were close. The battles they’d fought in business and in life had brought them together and it hurt my heart to think that I might be the thing that tore them apart again.
I sighed heavily. “Luke thinks we’re going to get married.”
“If that’s what he wanted, he shouldn’t have gone behind your back and slept with someone else.”
“True,” I said. “I’m going to hurt him and the one person he has to turn to will be Caden. What if… what if they can’t get past this? What if being family isn’t enough?”
“Olivia.” My mother set her drink down and pulled her chair closer to mine so she could gather my hands in her own. We had the same shaped fingernails, the same slender fingers and crooked pinkies. “Their relationship’s success does not rest on your shoulders. They’re grown men. You will have to let them sort it out on their own.”
I swallowed hard. “What if I’m not supposed to be with either of them?”
“Do you really believe that’s true?”
I shrugged. “You didn’t want me with Caden.”
“That’s because I thought he was a no good mouth breather who’d gone behind your back and tried to ruin your reputation,” she said sharply.
“Protective mama bear much?”
She squeezed my hands. “It’s my job to look out for you. But it’s not your job to look out for Caden and his brother. All you have to do is be honest. With them and with yourself. So long as you do that, everything will work out. I promise.”
She sounded like my father. Honesty was always the best policy in his eyes and he was never wrong.
“It’s going to be so hard,” I said.
Even though Luke had hurt me, I didn’t want to cause him any pain. Sure, I wanted to kick him in the balls and scream at him for cheating on me, but I didn’t want to steal his brother from him. He’d already lost his mother. He hardly took the time to call or see his stepdad. The rest of the Taylor family had already gone to their graves.
Caden was it.
For both of us.
“Sweetheart.” My mother released my hands and stroked my cheek. “You know there are more options out there in the world for you than just these two men, right? Love doesn’t have to be so messy. Take your father and me for example. Everything was just right. I’m not saying that’s how it is for everyone, but for someone like you, with so much to offer, I know in my bones you have an epic love story ahead of you. Maybe it’s not with either of these men.”
I frowned. I didn’t believe that. Caden was my love story. He was my history as much as he was my future, and I was done with letting anything stand in the way of that.
My mother continued. “However, when fate steps in like it has for you and Caden, you might be wise to listen to it. What are the chances that you two are thrust back together again? What are the chances that the man you’re with in NYC happens to be the brother of the boy who stole your heart all those years ago?” My mother smiled. “This is what love stories are made of, Olivia. You can have the fairy tale and still be the career woman you’ve worked so hard to become. You do not have to settle.”
“Choosing Caden isn’t settling.”
My moth
er smiled. “No. It’s not. Choosing him is choosing the battle. Choosing him is prioritizing your happiness. It’s not the easy choice. But I suspect—”
“That it’s the right one.”
My mother leaned back in her chair and picked up her tea again. The ice cubes rattled against the glass as she tipped her head back and sipped. “Your father always knew it would be Caden.”
“He did?”
She nodded. “He did. Even when things fell apart, he believed one way or another, you two would find each other again. He said the timing wasn’t right. He thought the two of you needed to grow apart first before you could grow back together. I never agreed with him. I thought Caden was the monster your whole school claimed him to be.”
“Me too.”
“But not your daddy. Sure, he made the jokes about getting his shotgun out if Caden ever showed his face around here again, but he said that to make you laugh, baby. He said it to show you he was on your side no matter what.”
I fought the lump in my throat and the welling of tears in my eyes. “I miss him so much.”
“So do I. Every day. But we are so lucky we had him, Olivia. Every day in this house with you and your father was a gift and nothing short of it. I want the same life for you. I want happiness for you. And peace. And love. Do you want the same things?”
I thought of what my father would tell me to do if he were here sipping a tea of his own. He’d probably be wearing one of his old baseball caps with torn stitching and sweat stains. He’d be basking in the sun and complaining about the heat all at once and looking me in the eye telling me one thing.
Be brave, Olivia. Be brave.
I hadn’t been brave these last three years.
I’d given in to the fear of ending up alone. I’d given in to the fear of falling in love, too. I’d picked the easy route, and that was Luke, and now I had to face the music and make things right again.