His lips quirk. “Who else? You know I didn’t paint it. Or decorate in here.”
“It’s beautiful,” I breathe, awestruck. Turning, I reach up to wrap my arms around Sig’s neck. “Where are we?” I ask again.
“I told you. We’re home. If you want it to be, that is.”
“Did you buy this place?”
“I did. It’s the house they were building near my sister’s neighborhood, the one where you said you could imagine kids playing in the yard.”
I can perfectly recall the house he’s speaking of, with its gabled roof and picket fence. “Y-you bought it? For us?”
“I bought it for you.”
“But why? Why would you do that? Do you even like this place?”
“Honestly, I could care less. It’s a house. It won’t be a home until you’re here. But now?” He looks around at the room, his eyes straying to the picture above the bed, the one of me. “Now, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.”
I gnaw on my lip as I think of what this could mean and of how I might screw it up. But then I feel a finger tug at my lip, freeing it from the prison of my teeth. “What?” I ask when I see Sig staring down at me.
“Stop worrying.”
“I’m not worrying.”
“You are worrying.”
I sigh. There’s just no hiding things from a cop. There’s just not. “It’s so beautiful here, but what about…what about…”
I hate to even ask about my brother. Somehow it feels like foisting unwanted responsibility on Sig. I mean, it’s different when it’s me taking care of Travis. In my house with my money. But this would be us taking care of him.
“It has a finished basement. All for Travis. A gaming-obsessed teenager’s wet dream.” At his words, a lump forms in my throat. I didn’t even have to ask. He’d already thought of my brother. “And it’s closer to your mom, too.”
My mom. My brother. My dream house. Sig has thought of everything.
I blink back tears. “It’s perfect, Sig. Just perfect.”
“Well, almost.”
Slowly, Sig sinks to one knee in front of me. He reaches inside his pocket and removes a tiny velvet box that makes my heart flutter in my throat.
“For weeks after Mom died, I’d wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I’d sit up in bed and gasp until my lungs felt like they were working again. And then I’d cry myself back to sleep. I never went to Dad. I knew he was more lost than I was. I promised myself then that I wouldn’t fall in love, that I wouldn’t give anybody that kind of power over me. The night that I held you in my arms, blood all over both of us, I felt the same way. Like I couldn’t breathe. I realized then that it’s you who keeps me breathing. Since the day I met you, you’ve had the power to hurt me, to devastate me, to destroy my world if you leave it, but you’ve also kept me breathing.”
“Sig, I–”
“Tia Lawrence,” he interrupts, “will you marry me? Will you stay with me, in this house, in this life, until the day I die? Will you keep me breathing until there’s no breath left in me? Because I can’t think of a life worth living if it doesn’t have you in it.”
“Sig, you–”
“I love you. More than a thousand dictionaries could define, I love you. Please say yes.”
I laugh. “Are you gonna give me a chance to answer you?”
His grin is lopsided and adorable and everything that I love about him, all summed up in a smile. “I guess.”
I drop to my knees in front of him, brushing aside the box so that I can press my chest to his. We are eye to eye, nose to nose, heart to heart. “Yes. That is my answer to everything you could ever ask me. Yes. Yes, I will marry you. Yes, I will keep you breathing. Yes, I will live here with you. You are my dream. My only dream. Your love, your kiss, your touch–you are everything I will ever need and more than I could’ve hoped for. I will follow you wherever you go. Until both of us stop breathing.”
He watches me quietly, intently. “I have one more question.” His voice is low and hoarse. Raw.
“What’s that?”
“Slow or rough?”
I see the wicked glimmer light the warm brown of his eyes, turning them golden in the flicker of the candles. “Slow,” I answer, pressing my mouth to his. “And then rough.”
His tongue slips out to trace my bottom lip as he unbuttons my blouse. “One more question,” he says, pushing the material from my shoulders and setting to work on the clasp of my skirt.
“Anything,” I say, arching my neck when his lips start to skim along my jaw. Sig nudges my skirt and panties down to the bend of my legs, leaving me in only my bra, kneeling in front of him. His hand slides up the outside of my leg, curving toward my groin at the last minute. When his finger finds my core, I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Wh-what was your question?” I prompt, knowing I won’t be thinking clearly for too much longer.
“Can I put a baby in you?”
His finger moves within me and I’m filled with a gush of desire that’s perfectly blended with unimaginable glee. A breathless laugh escapes my lips.
“Well?” he asks, licking at my nipple through the thin lace of my bra.
“I thought I told you my answer to anything you asked me was ‘yes’.”
I feel his lips curve against my breast and my heart soars. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
THE END