by Leach, Kiki
“That’s what I thought too,” he said. “But if he hadn’t have been here, then we wouldn’t have this…” He gestured between them and grinned again.
“We could’ve still had this,” she told him.
“Maybe. But I’m not sure how quickly or easily it would’ve led to…” He opened the top drawer of his dresser and pulled out a small, black velvet box. “This.”
He rested the box in the palm of his hand and lowered it to Vanessa’s eye level. She almost choked on air and grabbed on tight to her chest. Her eyes immediately filled with tears as she looked up at Maurice, who was beaming. She moved one hand up to her throat, and then another, wrapping them both around. It wasn’t until that very moment that she realized she had stopped breathing. But her heart was beating so fast and her pulse was racing beneath her skin. It was by those sensations alone that she knew she was at least still alive, and not dreaming.
Maurice took his time walking back over to the bed and sat down directly beside her, keeping that box in the palm of his hand. “I bought this a few weeks ago. Before the Hamptons… before you even told Alexis about us being official.”
“Why? I mean…” She stopped to laugh and eagerly waved her hands back and forth in front of her face in an attempt to gain control over her rattling nerves. “I mean, why did you go looking for a ring so soon? What if this didn’t work?”
“I’d always been confident that it would work between us, V, if we really decided to ever give what I knew we had a chance. But when everything happened, I sort of took a step back to look and see if this was what I really deserved from you, a promise of forever. When I came here that night, I was coming back for the ring.”
“What were you planning to do with it?”
“Hold onto it until I knew you were ready. Until we were ready.”
Her stomach flip flopped. Her lips quivered.
“And now?”
“And now I need you to know that what I did was never meant to hurt you.”
“I know. What you did was about Nathan and Sheila. You went about it stupidly, but I know that you would ever go out of your way to hurt me or violate the trust that I have in you, and with you and for you.”
“Never. And I won’t ever drop a bomb on you like that again, V. I promise.”
“You mean after…” She pointed down to the box.
“This isn’t a bomb,” he said, raising the between them, “it’s a diamond.”
She laughed and fiddled with her hands as she watched him slowly lift the lid.
She gasped. The tears started coming before she could even blink and rushed down to her cheeks when she leaned closer and noticed that at the center of a cluster of diamonds, with others embedded around the neck of a conjoined ring, was a garnet stone.
She pulled back and looked into Maurice’s eyes, which had reddened. He was already staring at her and still beaming at her reaction. “It’s my birthstone,” she said. “How the hell did you even manage to get something like that made?”
“I called in a few favors,” he said. “The owner of the shop in SoHo is friends with my parents.” He pulled the ring from the pillow and sat the box down beside them on the bed. He looked straight into her eyes while lifting up her hand and resting her palm against his. “I’ve never seen myself as the marrying kind,” he told her. “At least not with anyone who wasn’t you. And I know that we’re young and that this might be impulsive, but it’s always felt right--”
“Yes,” she said.
“And I’ve always felt that--”
“No, I mean, you don’t have to keep going, because I’ll marry you.” She took a moment and shook her head. “I don’t even need to hear anything else that you have to say to know how right this is. Especially if it’ll just make me cry even more or make my heart swell up inside my chest like a balloon. Or have me wanting to make love to you all over again, which I’ll happily do anyway.”
He lowered his eyes and arched his brows. Then he lifted his arm around her shoulder and bent forward, pulling her close. “Let’s get to it, then.”
She laughed and placed a hand on his chest. “Stop.” She slid her fingers back into his palm and stared down at their hands. As he enclosed his hand around hers, she looked up into his eyes and smiled wider than she had since she was a child receiving her first piece of candy on Halloween. “You are the one for me, Maurice Livingston,” she said. “You’re the one. It took too damn long for me to see it, but now that I have, there’s no way in hell that I‘m letting it go again.”
He raised her hand and instantly slid the ring on her finger. She held it up and watched as the diamonds glistened and sparkled against the moonlight that shone through every window.
“We are getting married,” she said. Then she looked at him and opened her arms wide. “AHHHHHHHHHH!” She leapt from the bed and wrapped her arms around his neck. He laughed and turned his mouth to hers, kissing her deep. Then he pulled back, his hands on her face, inching up into her hair and holding tight.
He stared into her eyes, which seemed to shine all the more in her complete happiness, and said the five words she had always longed to hear. “Soon to be Mrs. Livingston.”
She smiled even wider. “Hyphenated.”
“V.”
“I’m kidding.”
They fell back to the bed in a fit of laughter and made love more times than they could count for the remainder of the night and into the next day.
Coming next, in the series:
Book 5, The Wedding, will be the last book featuring all 5 main characters (3 of the 5 will have their stories wrapped up in a bow, while 2 will continue on in the absolute final book of the series, Book 6).
The Wedding may or may not be available for pre order due to the technological issues I had in attempting to get Truth & Consequences uploaded to the publishing program on time. SO, if you want to track its official release month & date, as well as get the official BLURB (which was written over a month ago and is just waiting to be revealed to you all), *please* keep up with/bookmark one or more of the following:
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