The Keurig latch slams in place. “I have dinner plans tonight.”
“Oh, really? With who?” I shove two orange segments into my mouth, so I can’t say anything stupid because she’s about to. I can see it on her face.
“Samuel.” She fires a challenge in my direction, and it lands. Hard.
My insides burn as I struggle not to let her see my fury. I chew the fruit slowly, considering my response. By the time I swallow, she’s irritated.
“You can bring him by here,” I say, the fruit adding to the acid in my stomach. “I’ll make enough for all three of us.”
“I hate you.”
“I don’t blame you. I’d hate me if I were you until I realized how much I saw the error of my ways.”
She takes her coffee cup from the machine. “You can’t see the error of your ways because you’re always right. The all-knowing. The one who gets to decide everyone’s fate.”
I grab her elbow and spin her around. The coffee sloshes around the mug but doesn’t spill. She gasps for breath as she looks at me.
“I was wrong. Okay? I thought I was helping you by just taking me off your plate so you could walk away. That’s stupid. I see it now.”
“Totally stupid.”
“I know. And if I’m being honest, I pushed you away for me too. Because if you weren’t here and a witness to my failures, then that was a little easier. And it was easier not to have to think I tainted you with my shortcomings.”
“You don’t think I know your shortcomings?” she asks. “I know your failures better than anyone, Mach. And there are a lot of them. But I have a lot of them too,” she adds.
She sets the coffee down but doesn’t take her eyes off me.
“We’re both imperfect, Mach. We’ve both made mistakes in our lives. But the thing is, I try not to repeat them. You’re hell-bent on doing them over and over.”
“Until now.”
“Which is a miracle I can’t believe.” She raises a brow. “Look, Mach—”
“Listen to me,” I say, reaching for her hand. I’m surprised she lets me have it. “I love you. I’m so fucking in love with you it scares the shit out of me, okay? What if something happens to you?”
A knowing look flickers through her eyes. “You weren’t responsible for what happened to your parents, Machlan.”
“I know. I do,” I say when I see she’s about to argue with me. “I know shit happens. But look at what happened to me in the wake of all that. Do you know what would happen to me if something happened to you? I’d die, Had. I’d fucking die.”
My voice wobbles as I hope she gets it.
“Something does happen to me every time you don’t love me back. I die.” She smiles sadly. “You can’t control everything. Being alone doesn’t make you impenetrable.”
“If I’ve learned anything over the past few days, it’s that I can’t control jack shit. Trust me. And half the things I think I know, I don’t. The only thing I know for sure is that you love me, and I’m one lucky son-of-a-bitch for that.”
I think back to my talk with Nana and the things Cross said. I take Hadley’s other hand in mine. The feeling of her palms in mine, the softness of her skin, the fact that she’s still here when she shouldn’t be has a tear trickling down my cheek.
“You’re the smartest person I know. You’re the strongest person I know. You’re the most patient and kind and thoughtful person I’ve ever met,” I say. “So, I’m going to give you all the facts and let you decide what you want. And whatever that is, I’ll respect it.”
She seems amused by this, which is fine. I am too.
The truth is, I need her to choose me. I need her to look at me like a baby standing in front of her and still decide I’m the right choice. I need her to choose me and forever with me.
My heart pounds, my palms sweat as I look at her.
“Okay,” she says. “Shoot. What are my options?”
Her hands relax, and her fingers lace with mine. I’m not sure she realizes she’s doing it.
“I promise not to let my shit get in the way of you and me. And if I start to do it, I want you to call me out on it, which I know you’ll hate doing.”
She pretends to consider this.
I take a deep, shaky breath.
“I’ll just … I’ll love you. And I’ll take your love, which is hard for me because I start overthinking everything and …”
She places a hand over my mouth and takes a step toward me. The jade flecks shine like the stars on a clear night, and I want to kiss her like she needs to be kissed. But I can’t. Not yet.
I’m going to spell it out, bare it all, and if she says yes, I’m all in. I’ll be in so far she won’t know what hit her.
“I want to grow old with you,” I whisper as she drops her hands. “I want to fall asleep next to you and wake up with you curled up against me, making me too hot. I want to fix you grilled cheese when I come home from the bar and hold you when you have a bad day.”
“I want you to hold me when I have good days, too.”
My heart beats a mile a minute. “I love you more, Hadley. Not more than you love me, but more than all our fights and disagreements. I love you more than the bad days and the bullshit we’ll have to go through in life. Because if I have to go through it, I don’t want to do it without you.”
“Oh, Mach …”
Her voice cracks as she wraps her arms around my waist. She buries her head in my chest, and I hold her so tight I think I might break her.
“All I can promise you is you’ll never find someone to love you more than me,” I say, kissing the top of her head.
She pulls back and looks up at me. “You know if you would’ve done this a long time ago, it would’ve stopped a lot of problems, right?”
“Yeah.”
She bites her lip. “You’re serious. Right? Like you won’t leave or second-guess this or back away once reality hits you.”
“No.”
“I swear on my life, if you pull that shit again, I won’t come back, and I’ll find the one guy in the world who will drive you absolutely crazy and marry him on the spot.”
“You’re pushing it.” I give her a look.
“I mean it. I’ll marry Logan just to spite you.”
She laughs.
As the sound washes over my ears, I think back to what Lance said about getting married. And then I think about Nana lying in the hospital bed, the wedding ring on her finger from a man who’s been dead for years.
Looking at Hadley, I kick myself for all the years we’ve wasted because of me. Letting another day go by seems like such a waste of a life. Too many days have come and gone to forfeit another.
I suck in a breath, my head spinning, but I’ve never felt more confident in a decision than this one.
“You’ve never really been mine but have always been mine,” I say.
“Your fault.”
“Yes. My fault,” I agree. “I don’t have a ring because I didn’t think this out, but thinking gets me in trouble sometimes, and I’m really trying to just go with the flow here and do what’s right and …” I take a deep breath, bending on one knee. “Will you marry me, Hadley Jacobs?”
She jerks her hands out of mine and covers her mouth. Tears stream, her body shaking so hard I can’t quite figure out if this is good or bad.
“Only you,” she says, laughing through the tears. “Only you can go from one to one thousand in half a second.”
“I’m doing what feels right,” I say, a nervous wobble to my voice.
“And you want to propose?”
“Even if you say no, I’ll love you and I’ll convince you that—”
She hits me in the chest before propelling herself at me. I fall backward, holding her as I land on the floor.
She continues to cry, but now, it’s intermixed with crazy, wild laughter. I just keep my arms around her and hope for the best.
Because that’s all I can do.
Hope for the best and love her until th
e day I die.
Thirty-Eight
Machlan
“I should’ve driven my car.” Hadley leans against my shoulder and pops a Swedish Fish in her mouth.
“It was your choice.”
She taps me with the side of her head. “Stop saying that.”
“Everything is your choice. The candy at the gas station. Whether you go to work or quit your brand-new job. Whether you move in with me.”
“I just accepted a marriage proposal.” She sits up and laughs. “Should I not move in with you?”
“It’s your choice.” I smirk, reaching over and grabbing her thigh. “Whatever you want.”
“If you say that again, I’m gonna kill you.” She pops another candy in her mouth. “What am I going to do now? I just quit a job I had for a day.” She makes a face while she chews. “I don’t think I would’ve liked it anyway.”
As I glance at her out of the corner of my eye, a spark of anxiety flickers in my gut. “You aren’t having second thoughts, are you?”
She grins slowly, another red candy sliding past her lips.
“Can you not fuck with me right now?” I ask. “I’m trying to be this nice, good guy and back off and let you do your thing, but when you look at me like that when I ask you something this fucking serious, it makes me wanna—”
“What? What’s it make you wanna do, Mach?”
I study her for a long second. “It makes me want to turn the truck down one of these side roads and pull you on my lap and have you ride me until I come in your pussy.”
“Do it.” She gulps.
I snicker.
“Come on,” she says, reaching across the truck and grabbing the crotch of my pants. I groan, thrusting my hips toward her. “Chicken.”
“I can’t. I have somewhere to be.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” She settles back in her seat. “And where might that be?”
“I need to get to the hospital.”
“The hospital? Why?”
My foot eases up on the accelerator. Peck said she’s fine in a text he sent right before we left Hadley’s. Still, I haven’t told Hadley, and I’m not sure how she’ll take me not telling her until now.
“Nana is in the intensive care unit,” I say carefully.
“What?” The candy flies off her lap as she twists to look at me. “What are you talking about?”
“She had a heart attack yesterday.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Her jaw drops. “You were at my house when she was in the hospital? Machlan!”
I take my hand off her leg. “Trust me. She was fine with it.” I rough my hand over my chin. “We were there all afternoon yesterday until, well, whatever time I showed up last night.”
“And you didn’t tell me? Is she okay?”
Looking at her, I let her see the somberness in my features. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want it to be about that. I want this moment to be about us. I didn’t want you to think I showed up at your house because of that. I didn’t.”
She nods, mulling that over. “But … is she okay?” she asks softly.
“She’s okay. Peck has been texting me. Everyone is there. Even Blaire.” I catch a look of concern on her face. “I know Blaire can be scary, but she’ll love you.”
“She’s so not like me, Mach,” she says warily. “She’s … extra.”
“Extra?” I burst out laughing. “That’s a good way to put it. Extra. I’ll tell her that.”
“Don’t you dare,” she warns. “She’ll kill me with one look. I’ve never been terrified of someone my entire life except Blaire.”
“Chicken,” I tease.
“Damn right. Now, back to Nana.”
“Anyway,” I say, “they’re running tests today to see how bad it was. I talked to her for a long time last night, and she sounded strong.”
Hadley rests her head on my shoulder again. “I can’t believe you left her, though. She wasn’t alone, was she?”
“She had Peck. He was convincing her to get better to make cheeseballs. Trust me, they’re fine.” I kiss the side of her head. “She told me to leave, actually.”
“Why?”
“She told me to go get you.” I extend my arm toward her. “She pointed out a lot of good things, some of them we’ll talk about someday, and made me realize I’d never get over you. So I might as well go get you.”
She wraps an arm around my middle. The cab of the truck is warm. Soft country music plays on the stereo, and Hadley hums along as we go down the road.
I think about Nana and all the things she said. And about my parents and how my mother always said to find our blessings.
That’s been a hard one for me over the years—to find my blessings. A lot of my life felt as if I’d been robbed of most of them. But right now, sitting here with Hadley, going to see my Nana and getting to see my extra sister that doesn’t come home nearly enough, I feel pretty fucking blessed.
Mom used to say blessings weren’t always pretty. That sometimes they came hidden, and you had to pluck them out of the ugly and use them.
Maybe a blessing was Hadley finally getting fed up with my shit. Maybe a blessing was Nana getting shook up enough to have a conversation that wasn’t easy for either of us. If those things are true, I have to use them. Otherwise, they’ll go to waste.
“Can I ask you something?” I ask.
“You just did.”
“Ha. Ha. Ha.” I bend my arm around her back and snuggle her closer to my side. “It’s your choice, but—”
“Fucking stop it.” She laughs. “You’re going to run this in the ground, aren’t you?”
I chuckle. “Seriously. I would like to get married sooner than later.”
“I don’t know …” She tries to pull away, but I don’t let her. I need her close, touching me, while she thinks about what I’ve said.
My stomach swirls with apprehension as she quiets. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up, but I had to. It’s the right call.
“I do know.”
“You’re sure?” she asks. “You don’t have to rush this, Mach.”
“I don’t have to do anything. But I want to marry you as soon as possible.”
She tries to rise up again. This time, I let her go.
“Why?” she asks, her eyes full of concern.
“When you know, you know.” I shrug. “And I’d like Nana to be there when it happens. And I’d like to stop wasting fucking time pretending it isn’t going to happen because we’ve done that for long enough.”
She doesn’t answer. As I turn my head to try to get a hold of her reaction, she scoots all the way next to me.
“This has nothing to do with anything but me and you,” I tell her. “Whatever comes our way, we’ll figure it out together. I mean, can you imagine us fighting on the same side for once?”
Her mouth covers mine. I laugh against her lips, trying to see over her head so we don’t wreck. “Had,” I mumble. “I can’t see.”
She pulls back, smiling wickedly. “Don’t worry.” Her hands go to the button of my jeans.
I gasp as she undoes the button. The zipper cracks through the air.
“You’ll be able to see over me from here,” she says.
“Oh, God,” I mutter through clenched teeth as she licks the top of my cock.
My phone buzzes from the holder by the radio, and I see a text from Peck.
Peck:Taking her back for tests. Will be a couple of hours. Don’t rush. Everything is fine.
I take a quick right onto a dirt road. The abrupt motion makes her grip my thighs so she doesn’t fall to the floor.
“Where are we going?” she asks as she sits up and looks around.
“I’m trying something new today.”
“You aren’t trusting your phone for directions, are you? Mine almost ran me off a bridge the other day.”
I laugh. “No. Not that.”
“Then what?”
“We’re going to go to the hospital in
a minute. I’m going to be there for my family. But starting today, you come first.”
I pull off the road behind a little-abandoned shed. I kill the engine and look at her.
Hadley grins. “I hope that has a double meaning.”
I grab her, making her squeal, as I pull her on my lap. “Whatever you want.”
She smacks my chest, starting to tear into me, but I smother her with kisses.
Epilogue
Hadley
“Yours looks better than mine.” Sienna makes a face, holding up a bowl of scalloped potatoes. “Are they supposed to look like this?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. But they look a little dark.”
“Is that a nice way to say burnt?” Sienna laughs. “I should’ve ordered this at Peaches, put it in a dish at home, and brought it over. My mom does that sometimes.”
Mariah laughs. “Well, the baked beans are stuck to the bottom of the kettle, so there’s that.”
“We’re a mess, girls.” Sienna shrugs. “None of this may be edible.”
“Peck will eat it,” I say, leading everyone to the table. “If nothing else, we’ll send it all home with him.”
We enter Nana’s dining room to see our men all settled around the table. Nana is at the head, the color in her face a little rosier than it has been. I get why. It would be hard to feel like crap surrounded by the Gibson boys.
Peck takes the bowl of potatoes from Sienna and doesn’t comment a bit about how black the top is. Walker and Lance discuss one of the Landry businesses Sienna’s family runs as I sit next to Machlan.
It’s been a week since Nana was released from the hospital. The ten days she was admitted was one of the most interesting experiences of my life. I’ve never seen anything like it.
One of her grandchildren was always with her. No one complained or couldn’t make it, not one of them ever bailed. The four of them traded off with the expertise of a well-oiled machine with this woman in the center.
Mariah, Sienna, and I stayed too when Blaire left. She had a big case in Chicago and had to leave after a couple of days. Seeing Blaire, this gorgeous, powerful woman, break down in tears beside Nana’s bed was a scene I’ll never forget. The love and acceptance are something I’ve always wanted, the feeling of being together through thick and thin. Having them accept me into the fold makes me feel like I’m walking in the clouds.
Gibson Boys Box Set Page 97