“I have something I want you to see first.” He leaned down to give me a quick kiss. At first, I thought he wanted to show me our master bedroom so we could christen it, but when Nate walked to the last bedroom, I cocked an eyebrow at him.
He balanced me with one hand and twisted the knob to the door. My giggles immediately vanished when I was greeted with the studio. A built-in bookshelf ran across one wall, empty of books. Instead, there were empty canvases, paintbrushes, and every color of paint I could ask for. On another wall was a large picture of the Bissell House.
Nate lowered me to the floor and faced me toward the easel. “Do you like?” he whispered into the crook of my neck.
“I . . . I . . . love it.” I turned back to him. “But why?”
Nate pulled an envelope from the shelf and handed it to me. “Go ahead.” He tried to hide his grin. “Open it.”
My fingers slid under the flap, and I pulled out the few sheets of paper. My eyes scanned the first page, and I flipped through the others. “This is my transcript from UNNC.”
Nate closed the gap between us. His hand framed my face, and he gave me a half kiss. “This is our second chance, but it's also your chance to follow your dream. You can sit in here and draw. You can go back to school and finish. You can major in art and be a curator.”
I threw my hands around his neck and kissed him with every fiber of my soul. “Thank you,” I whispered against his lip.
Letting go of Nate, I walked toward the bookshelf. My hand ran across the cream wood. “This is a dream come true.”
“Almost.” Nate said. He paused for a second before he uttered, “There's one more thing.”
I turned to face him and I gasped. Nate was down on one knee, in the center of the room. “Brielle, I want to spend the rest of my life making you happy. I promise to walk into the sunset with you, to make sure that every kiss we share gives you the urge to throw your leg back. I promise to give you half kisses every night before you go to sleep and to love you unconditionally all the days of my life. Will you marry me?” He held out a small black box and flipped it opened.
I felt the warm tears slide down my cheeks. I bit my lower lip to contain my smile. “Yes.” I whispered and walked toward him. “Yes!” I said and laced my arms around his neck. “Yes!” I kissed his lips tenderly.
“Tell me.” He kissed the corner of my lips.
“I love you. I always have and I always will. Even when I hated you, I loved you,” I said before our lips collided. Nate lifted me off the floor and I actually kicked my foot back. Sometimes bad things happened. But other times the world worked in mysterious ways.
Who said happily-ever-afters were overrated?
The End.
Acknowledgments
I’m going to make this simple and quick.
To Sassy Savvy Fabulous, Give Me Books, Okay Creation, Indie After Hours, White Hot Reads and Write Girl, thank you for all your help with Torrid Affair.
To the beta readers, test readers and anyone who read this book while I was writing it, thank you for your time and notes.
To the authors who have read Torrid Affair, thank you for the friendship.
To the bloggers, I would be nothing without you. Thank you for sharing my work.
Lastly the readers. I FUCKING LOVE YOU! Thank you for reading my books and becoming my friends. I cherish you all in my heart.
About the Author
For more information you can find me:
@authorcallieA
authorcallieanderson
www.callieandersonauthor.com
[email protected]
Also by Callie Anderson
Invisible Love Letter
Love is fatal; a snake that slithers into your life, poisons you with its venom, and leaves you there to die.
I swore I wouldn’t be my parents.
I swore I would stay away from the limelight.
Falling in love with a musician was definitely out of the question.
Weston Carter was all kinds of wrong for a girl like me. He was musician, a womanizer, and a first class heartbreaker.
I didn't know a love like this could exist. Our love was epic, the kind people wrote stories about. We fell into it hard, unable to control our feelings.
I set myself up for a shattered heart.
A broken life.
A fucked up love story.
Endless Love Letter
Our love had to live in the past…
The first time we met I knew.
She was perfection.
I needed to know everything about her—what made her smile, what her lips tasted like, what her body felt like under my skin…
But our love was fatal.
The purest venom that seeped through my veins and embedded deep into my soul.
Emilia was
My love.
My muse.
The woman who owned my soul.
The woman who shredded my heart to pieces.
Torrid Affair Page 28