Her eyes had widened with dread. “What was happening?”

Shaking my head, I cupped her cheeks and leaned close. “I’ll tell you everything, just not right now. Right now I need you to know that I love you, and I need to know that I haven’t lost you.”

Kamryn’s jaw quivered, and she looked down to where our chests were pressed together.

Putting my fingers under her jaw, I lifted her face until I could look in her blue eyes and I whispered, “Please. You . . . you I can’t lose.”

A sob broke free from her chest, and she shook her head back and forth. “Brody, I love you. But if we do this, then I want all of you.”

“Done,” I vowed and pressed my lips to hers, only moving back far enough so I could speak. “Done, Kamryn. Completely, one hundred percent yours. No more calls in the middle of the night,” I swore against her lips. “No more leaving. No more hiding. I’m yours.”

“I’m done sharing you.”

I brushed a thumb against her trembling lips and looked back into her eyes. “I hate that you felt like you were. If only you knew that it’s always been only you. I was never hers; she’s never had a part of me. But God, Kamryn, I’m so damn sorry for making you wait so long.”

“Can we please have our forever?” she begged, her voice so soft and broken, I wanted to die for ever making her go through this pain and doubt in our relationship.

“Yeah, babe. We can have our forever.”

17

Kamryn

July 18, 2015

A PAIR OF arms slid around my waist, and I smiled when Brody’s lips pressed firmly against my neck.

“What are you making?”

“Breakfast.”

“Really now?” he asked as he grabbed a sausage patty from the plate and took a bite. “Is breakfast for dinner a normal occurrence for you?”

I took the rest of the sausage from his fingers and spoke around it. “No, but you made me miss it the last few mornings, and I’m a breakfast-food person.”

“Are you really mad at me for making you miss breakfast?” he asked softly. The combination of his soft lips and rough stubble against my neck caused my stomach to feel like it was melting.

“Hmm?”

He laughed huskily, and I leaned against the rumbling in his chest. “I’ll take that as a no. Can I help?”

“You touching me and kissing me like that is the exact opposite of helping.”

Running his hands over my stomach, he played with the top of my pajama shorts and hipbones before bringing his hands back up to pass over the swell of my br**sts. “Touching you how?”

“Uh.” I licked my lips and tried to control my breathing. “T-touching me like that.”

“So you want me to stop?”

“Hmm?” I didn’t even know where we were anymore. All I could focus on were his hands moving slowly back down my stomach and his lips on the dip between my neck and shoulder.

Suddenly his body was gone from mine, and I stumbled back a step before he caught me.

“What the hell?”

He laughed loudly and leaned around my body to kiss me chastely. “I’ll finish the sausage,” he said as he moved in front of me to check the cooking sausage.

“But—you—what—not fair!”

“Sausage, sweetheart. Breakfast for dinner. You have a ton of fruit and a waffle iron out. Any of this ringing a bell?”

I just stood there staring at him like he’d stolen an ice cream cone from a child. “That was so hateful!”

Brody barked out a laugh and wrapped an arm around my waist to pull me in for another kiss. “God, I love that accent of yours.”

“I don’t have one,” I grumbled and moved away from his hold to begin cutting up fruit.

It had been three days since we talked out everything in the entryway of Kinlee and Jace’s house, and in that time . . . there had been nothing but us. No Olivia, no Reynoldses, no J. Shepherd . . . just us. It had been beyond amazing and felt like a dream that I wasn’t ready to wake up from. While we’d spent most of the time in the bedroom, we had done a lot of talking. He’d told me everything that was happening with Olivia’s psychotic family that he’d kept hidden from me. He told me about J. Shepherd’s threats, and his worries about what they might come back with now that he had filed for divorce, even though he had a lot of evidence on Olivia. But mostly he told me about everything he wanted to do now that we were about to start our forever. Including being reintroduced to his parents as his girlfriend. I’m not going to lie—that one was scaring me.

Jace and Kinlee had taken the news well—too well—but that was because they hated Olivia and wanted Brody back. Well, and probably because they both knew me and liked me. But while I’d met Brody and Jace’s parents, I don’t think they’d ever given me a second thought. So even though I knew they would be happy Brody had left Olivia, I had no idea how they would react to me. My bet was that it wouldn’t be good. In my mind I was still a home-wrecker. I was still “the other woman.” And I still didn’t understand how anyone could see me as anything but those things.

“What are you thinking so hard about?”

My body tightened as Brody’s voice broke through my inner freak-out, and I focused on loosening it as I continued cutting fruit. “Your parents. I’m still scared about that conversation . . . about how it’s going to go, and how it might be for a long time after that.”