I knew it wasn’t the right time. Or the right place. There were things I needed to do before I made my big gesture, before I showed her the way it could be, if she were to choose me.
If she were to give me the honor of being the next man she called her own.
“I want to take you somewhere,” I said after a while, smoothing my thumb over her palm. “Will you go somewhere with me?”
“Where?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to tell you. Not yet. But… will you go with me?”
She leaned up, placing her mug on the bedside table before she took my face in her hands. “Anywhere.”
I smiled.
“But, not today,” she said next. “Today, I need to deal with… all of this.” She gestured to the space around us, as if her former fiancé and her family and the rest of the town were right there in my bedroom with us. Then, she turned my hand over, checking the time on my heart monitor watch with another groan. “Starting with church. In like an hour.”
I chuckled. “I understand.”
Reaching for her hand again, I squeezed it in mine, frowning as I watched her. She was so young — too young to be faced with the hardship she was about to endure. It wasn’t going to be easy to break off an engagement, especially not in this town.
And especially not with her family.
“Why don’t you take a few days?” I offered. “I’ll be right here, but you do what you have to do. Okay?”
Her lips formed a brief smile before it fell again. “Okay. Yeah. I think that’s best.”
“Do you want me to come with you? To be with you for any of it?”
She sighed at that. “No,” she said, rubbing her free hand down her face. “As much as I know it’d be easier that way, this is something I need to handle on my own.”
“I get that,” I said, lacing our fingertips together. “How about you save Friday for me, then?”
“Friday,” she mused.
I nodded. “Gives me some time to get everything together.”
At that, she cocked a beautiful eyebrow. “What are you planning, Noah Becker?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out, Ruby Grace Barnett,” I retorted, kissing her nose, her cheeks, and then capturing her lips. She inhaled at the connection, breathing into me, a sigh leaving her lips when I finally pulled back.
Her mouth curved into a playful smile. “Last night, you said I have strawberry smoothie lips.”
“You do,” I said, running my thumb over said lips. The bottom one stuck to my skin, pulling down to expose her teeth before it popped back up.
That sight shot electricity straight down to my cock.
I groaned, shaking my head and readjusting myself in my shorts as I slid my hand back into her hair. “I thought that the first time I saw you back in town. And every day since, I wondered if they tasted like a strawberry smoothie, too.”
“And do they?”
I shook my head, leaning in to kiss her and elicit another breathy sigh.
I decided it was my new favorite sound.
“Better,” I murmured against her lips. “They taste even better.”
Ruby Grace
Church felt like the Gravitron from the Tennessee State Fair that morning.
One minute, I was smiling like a loon, stomach flipping as I replayed every moment with Noah the night before.
The next, that stomach flip would turn into more of a roll, and I’d lurch forward, feeling like I was going to vomit any minute.
In the course of twenty-four hours, everything had changed.
I glanced down at the ring on my finger — the one I’d put back on before leaving Noah’s — and bile rose in my throat again. I couldn’t wait to take it off. I couldn’t wait to shake off the weight of the wedding to a man who didn’t love me, who didn’t care about anything other than what I would look like on his arm, what my family could do for his campaign.
I felt like the biggest fool, but soon, it would be him who felt that way.
Still, I knew my stomach wouldn’t stop turning — not until it was all said and done, and maybe even then, too. I didn’t know where to start, who to tell first, and I didn’t have any way of knowing what to expect once our house of cards crumbled.