by Gia Riley
He turns toward me as the elevator doors open and close again. “You wouldn’t have to try very hard, baby. I’d propose to you right now.”
I push against his hard chest, but he doesn’t budge even the slightest bit. “Now you’re being ridiculous. This has nothing to do with marriage. Plus, we don’t even have to be married to have kids.”
“Are you pregnant?” he asks as his eyes fall to my stomach, making me die a little more inside.
Before he has a chance to envision the impossible, I tell him, “No.”
“Even if you were, I’d still ask you to marry me right here, right now. I’ll buy you any ring you want.” Like he timed it perfectly, the elevator doors open on the lobby level, right in front of the boutiques we were shopping in earlier today. “There’s a jewelry store right over there.”
I stab at the button to close the doors, but they don’t budge because he’s standing in the way. Without thinking, I end up standing right in front of the store he was talking about. The windows are full of expensive jewels that sparkle different colors depending which way the light hits them. They’re more extravagant than I could ever dream of.
I feel Lane behind me, waiting for me to say something. I called his bluff and now here we are in this awkward situation with a proposal still up in the air. Even though I love Lane, I don’t want to force him into asking me to marry him just to prove a point or get the answer to a question I should already have.
I need to tell him the truth.
After I scrounge up the little bit of courage I have left and turn around, Lane’s not standing anymore. He’s down on bended knee with a teal box in his hand, the lid propped open on its hinge. “What are you doing?” I ask him as a wave of panic raises my body temperature about a million degrees. Suddenly, I’m asking way too much of my deodorant.
I barely hear the words come out of Lane’s mouth when he says, “Marry me, Noelle. This might be our first time together in the physical sense, but you’ve owned my heart for six months. No amount of time can change how I feel for you, or what I want for us.”
“How long have you had this ring?” The urge to reach out and touch it is strong, but I keep my hands to myself, my hands suddenly so cold I shiver.
“It doesn’t matter how long I’ve had it.”
“Yes, it does,” I argue.
“I bought it a week into the tour.”
I raise my head, shocked that he’s had it all this time and I had no idea. All those nights we shared secrets and talked, he had a diamond in his possession. “That’s like five months ago, Lane. We barely knew each other back then.”
“I may not have had you figured out, and I probably never will, but what I did see, I never wanted to lose. What I haven’t seen, I can’t wait to experience. Noelle, after seeing you with my sister this week, and the way you handled everything my past threw at you, I realized buying this ring was the best decision I’ve ever made.”
“But you told me you weren’t sure about me at first.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to tell you I was so sure I got you a ring. After seeing Lemon, and talking to her again, I realized all the doubts I had were rooted in my past. They had nothing to do with you or my love for you. Do you even understand what it means to me that you’ve been exposed to all my secrets and you still want me?”
“You can’t help how you grew up. The only thing you have control of is how you continue as an adult.”
“That right there is why I want to marry you, baby. I want to live life with you by my side. Don’t make me dream without you.”
“What will happen when I go back to Pennsylvania? I still have a life there I have to figure out what to do with.”
“Right now, we focus on enjoying our time together. When the day comes you need to go back to Pennsylvania, we’ll talk about our options. This proposal isn’t me telling you to give up any of your dreams. It’s me asking you to make new ones with me.”
“Really?”
“Really, Noelle. What you’ve done for me this week, and for Lemon, I’ll never forget that as long as I live.”
“All I did was love you.”
“You cared about two people who were once so deprived of love they didn’t think they were worthy of it at all. You saved my sister and made me fall even more in love with you while you did it.”
“You saved your sister, Lane. You’re the one who pulled her off the stage and took a risk. Not me.”
“We did it together—and that’s how I want us to live the rest of our lives, no matter how long or short they may be. Now, can I get up yet?” he asks adorably.
I nod, but as he slips the ring on my finger, I feel like the biggest hypocrite. I’ve let this proposal go too far, but I still can’t stop him. I’m desperate to hold onto him a little while longer.
As I stand speechless, he searches my face for clues. “Do you like it? If you don’t, you can exchange it for something else.”
“It’s perfect. I love it.” The round diamond in the center is as big as an M&M, and the little ones circling around like a halo seem to go on forever. Eventually, they meet up with the band and continue their journey the entire way around my finger. It’s already my prized possession.
He wipes his thumbs underneath my eyes, smiling. “Why are you crying if you like it?”
“Because as much as this means to me, I haven’t been completely honest with you, Lane. There have been so many chances for me to tell you the truth, but I’ve never taken a single one of them.”
“What are you talking about?” he asks, completely confused. Up until now, he’s been the only one with a secret to expose. Mine’s not as deep as a sister with an addiction or unexpected pregnancy, or a mother who overdosed and left this earth long before her time, but it’s still mine—and as much as I hate it, I have to own it.
Lane takes my hand and leads us to the fountain in the center of lobby. He sits down on the edge of the polished marble and keeps me standing between his legs. Even though I knew there would come a day when I’d have to tell the man I love that I haven’t been whole since I was a teenager, I never imagined it would hurt as much as this. That it would take away our chance at creating our perfect future without even asking if I cared or what I wanted.
Maybe we’re alike in that way. Lane didn’t ask to have his mother taken away or for his dad to live a life at sea. He didn’t ask for a sister who would get mixed up with a bunch of guys who would mistreat her, just like I didn’t ask for this.
Even though the realization helps me make a little more sense of my feelings, it doesn’t take any of the hurt away, especially once I rob Lane of a piece of his future.
A single glance from him is usually comforting, though right now, his tenderness soothes me a little less. His muscles are tense as he waits, his shoulders tight as he holds on to me. I haven’t even told him yet and I already wish I’d lied.
“You’re shaking, Noelle.”
“I’m scared.” I’m waving my white flag on the battlefield.
“You’re the strongest girl I’ve ever met. Nothing can stop you—not even what you’re about to tell me.”
“How can you be so sure when I haven’t told you yet?”
“Did you let Lemon’s drama come between us? Did you let Midnight Fate or the tour stop us from being together?”
“No, but that’s different. Lane, all I’ve ever wanted was for someone to love me and to accept me for me.”
He narrows his eyes, the hurt reflecting in his blue orbs. “I haven’t done that for you?”
“You have, but we’ll never be like Lark and Easton. That’s why after seeing the nursery and reading over her birth plan, it just hit me all over again. I’ll never be able to make you that happy. I mean, did you see Easton? He’s wearing a fake bump and treating Lark like she’ll break if she even stands up. He’s crazy happy.”
“Forget about Lark and Easton. We’ll never be them. What we have is ours, baby. Nobody else’s.”
And we’re missing a huge piece.
I turn my head away from him, imagining how amazing he would be with a baby and what it would be like to watch him rock our daughter to sleep at night or teach our little boy how to fish with all those ropes and hooks in his closet. “We are different. I’m different. That’s why I need to know if you can live with only ever being an uncle.”
He hooks his thumbs in my belt loops, wrapping his long fingers around my hips and pulling me closer. “What are you saying? You don’t want kids?”
“It’s not that I don’t want them. It’s that I can’t have them, Lane. As much as I want to give that gift to you as your future wife, I’ll never be able to. You deserved to hear that from me from day one, and I’m sorry I’ve been misleading you this whole time.”
“I don’t imagine that’s an easy ice breaker.”
“It’s not.”
“Have you been honest with your other boyfriends from the start?”
“There haven’t been many. I had one serious boyfriend I told. Other than that, I kept it to myself. There was no use bringing it up if the relationship wasn’t going anywhere.”
“Why did it take a proposal to tell me?”
It’s a legit question. One he has every right to ask because I should have told him the truth during all those late-night phone conversations we had. The calls we dove deeper and deeper into with our hearts and our bodies.
“As soon as I realized I'd be devastated to lose you, it was easier to promise myself I’d tell you tomorrow or the day after that. I was desperate for more time with you, Lane. I wasn’t ready to lose the only man who has ever made me look forward to tomorrow.”
He drops his head to my stomach, leaning it against me. I run my fingers over the stubble on the back of his head, waiting for him to tell me how disappointed he is in me. He surprises me when he kisses my stomach and says, “I’ll worship this body because you make me whole. Not for what it can or can’t give me.”
Tears fall from my eyes and all I can do is wrap my arms around his neck, holding on so tightly that, when he stands up, I go with him. Instead of putting my feet back on the ground, he guides my legs around his waist, carrying me across the lobby to the elevator like a child.
He lets me cry in his arms as he rubs my back soothingly. Even though I’m the one who should be consoling him, he still protects me.
“It’s okay,” he whispers. “We’ll be fine.”
I want to take his words and engrain them into my brain so when Lark’s baby is born, and I’m wishing I could hold my own baby in my arms, I’ll remember them. I’ll remember that Lane is going to love me no matter what.
I stay in his arms as he unlocks the door, and all the way to the bedroom where he lays me in the center of the bed. Standing above me, he makes love to me with his eyes. My clothes are still on, but I’m more exposed than I’ve ever been. I’ve given him my deepest, darkest secret and he’s taken care of it, treating it like treasure instead of trash.
Pulling my shoes off, each ballet flat falls to the floor, the carpet muffling the sounds. He concentrates on my pants next, unbuttoning them and pulling them over my hips and down my thighs. Freeing both legs at the same time, he takes his time folding the denim.
I try to help him with my shirt but he pushes my hands away, telling me, “Let me unwrap my gift. The only thing I want on this body is my ring.”
“Lane,” I whisper as his hands slide under the hem and roam over my breasts until he has a handful of each. My nipples harden just as he tugs on them, sending the most erotic sensations straight between my thighs.
Instead of reaching behind my back and unclasping my bra, he slides his fingers between the mesh cups and tugs, shredding it in half. It falls away from my chest, his eyes watching the rise and fall of my chest with each breath I take—the anticipation killing me.
“These are my favorite underwear,” I remind him, hoping he’ll show some mercy.
He hooks his thumbs under the lace and pulls them down my legs. “Mine, too. I plan on seeing them again.”
My smile doesn’t stay on my face long. Not when he takes my left hand and kisses the ring he gave me. Even though I’ve yet to officially accept his proposal, it’s clear I’m his. I always have been.
“Do I need a condom?” he asks, hesitantly, as he undresses himself, no doubt wondering why I made him wear them in the first place.
“No, you don’t have to. Once we became exclusive, I only used them because I was too afraid to tell you there wasn’t any chance of me getting pregnant.”
“And you’re one hundred percent sure?”
“That I can’t get pregnant? Or that I don’t want you to use one?”
“Both.”
“Yes, Lane. Our secrets are gone. I don’t want anything else to keep me from getting lost in you.”
He leans forward like he’s been set free, kissing my neck so lightly I almost beg him for more. He shuts me up when he says, “I want to feel you, Noelle. I want to feel the way you grip me and hold on to me like you never want to let go. I want to fuck my fiancée for the first time.”
“But I never said yes.”
He stands back up only to remove his boxer briefs. As soon as they fall to the floor, my heart races as the tip of his dick bobs up and down with each move he makes. “You became my fiancée the second I put the ring on your finger. It didn’t matter what you said after that.”
“I thought it would be a deal-breaker for you.”
“If you want kids, Noelle, I’ll go to the ends of the earth to find you the perfect heart to love.”
“You mean adoption?”
“Yes, a child doesn’t need our genes to be ours. Just like you don’t have to give birth in order to be a mother.”
I never realized how much I wanted a baby of my own until I was told I couldn’t have it. Up until today, I thought I’d lost that privilege, and now Lane’s given it back to me.
The sound of metal crunching, glass shattering and the never-ending hum of a broken horn happens so fast I can barely remember what they sound like separately, especially when the shrillness of my cousin screaming overshadows all those terrifying sounds.
The warmth covering my hands is enough to keep me content and relaxed. When I do lift my eyelids, the blanket covering me isn’t made of soft cotton. The material’s red, just like the one I remember having tea parties on top of when I spent more time with dolls than humans, but it’s just clothing soaked in my own blood as it seeps from my body.
“Noelle! Don’t move,” my cousin Becca tells me over and over. Even though we’re the same age, I trust her to keep me safe because I couldn’t move even if she told me to.
Our babysitter is still silent from the driver’s seat, and with the way she’s slumped over the steering wheel, her hands still holding tightly to the wheel, I wonder if she’s dead.
A man with dreadlocks all the way down his back tries to open my door, but it won’t budge. He sticks his head through the window, and I realize the glass is all broken.
His face falls when he looks at me, and I want to tell him to get me out of the car, but he’s gone before I have a chance. My heart beats a little faster and I worry he’s not coming back to get me.
Sirens wake me, even though I don’t remember closing my eyes. This time, when I look at the back of the seat in front of me, the pain in my stomach is enough to make me throw up. I turn my head so it doesn’t get all over me, and Becca’s not there. The driver’s seat is empty, too.
I’m the only one left.
The smoke circling around the outside of the car is so ethereal I wonder if this is what Heaven looks like. But Heaven doesn’t have pain, and my stomach hurts so bad there’s only one place I could possibly be—in Hell. The place where bad people go.
All the voices around me blend together until one stands out above the rest. It’s the one that scares me the most, the man saying, “If you pull the glass out, she’ll bleed to death right here. It’s the only
thing keeping her alive.”
I’m going to die and I’ve never even been in love. I haven’t graduated high school or gone to college. I’ve never seen my favorite band in concert or watched an R-rated movie.
I’m only eleven.
I get so tired I close my eyes again. I try to push the mask away from my mouth, but I can’t get my arms to move.
Someone who looks just like me, only older, stares back at me. I realize the braces on my teeth won’t be there forever. I won’t always have crooked glasses and hand-me-down jeans with worn knees. I won’t always be a tomboy who would rather play kickball at recess than sit with the girls and talk about boys.
But I’m only eleven.
“Open your eyes, sweetheart.”
It sounds like my mom, and as hard as I fight to get to her voice, I can’t. I’m still trapped.
“Mom,” I beg, but she can’t hear me. My lips aren’t even moving.
More sobs follow, and I can tell whatever they’re talking about is bad.
I don’t want to die. I’m only eleven.
“Jesus, baby,” Lane whispers when I finish telling him the bits and pieces I remember about the accident. The accident that changed my life forever before I even figured out what I wanted to do with it.
I’m grateful I’m alive. I’m grateful I’m safe in Lane’s arms. And I’m grateful I have a future to plan. What Lane doesn’t realize is that he’s healing the rest of my broken pieces. The ones I was so sure would screw up my happiness forever.
“I love you so much,” I tell him, meaning the words more than I ever have before.
“Noelle, just let me hold you. We don’t have to do anything else.”
I’m so desperate to feel something other than the memories that I reach for him, guiding him between my thighs. Although he’s hesitant, he slides inside me.
Without a barrier between us, his hips move back and forth, his muscles clenching as he closes his eyes and gets lost in every new sensation we’re sharing with each other for the first time. “You feel so good, baby. So. Fucking. Good.”
“Lane,” I gasp when he grabs my hips, lifting them the slightest bit before pushing deeper than he’s ever been before. “Is this the hungry sex we were talking about?”
