“It was difficult to screw the shade on.”
He bends down to grab my ankles and slide me out from under the bed, a knowing smirk on his mouth. “You’re not going to put anything together, are you?”
“No, I am! I really am. I just got distracted.” I crack my knuckles. “I’m ready to get down to business so I can get those kisses. Here, hand me a Jerry.”
Cooper’s eyebrows rise quizzically. “A what?”
“A Jerry. You know, one of those little doohickeys they include with the furniture so you can tighten the bolts up.” I’m miming the gesture of screwing something in, and Cooper is looking at me, dumbfounded. How is he not getting this? “You know, it’s a right angle. It looks like a flat star on each end?”
Cooper rubs the back of his neck, and I have made a POOR choice not getting this stuff built because, honestly, he looks so good it hurts. Dang those distracting TikTok videos. “Do you…do you mean an Allen key?”
“What’s an Allen key?”
He bends down (hello, fantastic backside) and then picks up the exact tool I was talking about. “Allen key.”
“Ohhh, is that what it is? Yeah, I call it a Jerry.”
He frowns, looking torn between amusement and horror. “Why?”
I shrug. “Because I can never remember Allen.”
“But you can remember the name Jerry?”
“Mmhmm. Why are you laughing like that? Seriously…do you really need to double over so dramatically? Oh, you’re going to slap your thigh now. Okay, yeah, laugh it up, Mister Chuckles. Lucy doesn’t know the names of tools because she’s not Mrs. Fixit! Hardie-har-har.”
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Cooper finally controls his laughter enough to come over to me and yank me up off the ground. His arms go around me, and he hugs me tightly to him. “Lucy, you’re the craziest person I’ve ever met.”
“Rude.”
“I love you.” He cups my jaw, and his lips crash into mine. Just like that, he caved on his own no-kissing rule. I knew this would happen, which is why I didn’t take the furniture assembling too seriously. Cooper always tries to withhold physical affection from me when he wants me to do something, and it never works. It does the opposite. It makes him twice as passionate when he gives in, but I’m impressed, because an hour is definitely the longest he’s made it.
“Would you say yes if I asked you to marry me right now?” he says in a gruff voice with an intoxicating smile.
I freeze and meet his gaze. “Are you asking me?”
“Maybe. Give me your answer first and I’ll tell you.” The way his eyes are twinkling almost has me complying. It’s very difficult to not give in to Cooper right away.
“That’s not how it works.”
“Allen keys are also not called Jerrys.”
“That’s different…those are tools. This is a proposal we are talking about!”
He grins and drops his hands away. “We don’t do anything the normal way. Tell me—would you say yes?”
My breath constricts in my lungs, but I have to be honest with him. “I don’t think I could. We’ve only been seeing each other for, like, two months.” I say it casually like I don’t know exactly how long and I’m not the kind of girl to tick off every single day on the calendar and mentally celebrate things like week-iversaries. “And some of those days, we weren’t even official! Imagine what people would say if we got married. They would think we’re insane. You haven’t even known me long enough to really decide if you want to spend every day for the rest of your life with me. We need more time together so you can realize I stick my stray hairs to the side of the shower wall so they don’t go down the drain and then forget to clean them off.”
It’s terrible that I’m not saying yes right away, especially given the fact that his last relationship ended because his girlfriend didn’t want to marry him. But it’s not that I don’t want to marry him—it’s that I’m scared to.
I’m preparing for a fight or for Cooper’s shoulders to sag and him to walk away, Charlie-Brown style. He doesn’t, because like he said, we’re not normal, and that’s mainly because he’s an extraordinary man. He does, however, do something unexpected.
Cooper smiles, scoops me up, carries me through the house and out the back door, marches to the pool, and dumps me in without so much as pausing.
I come up, gasping for air, mouth wide open and disbelieving as I stare up at him grinning from ear to ear beside the pool. I swear, if his freaking abs didn’t look so incredible, I would break up with his sorry butt right now. “What was that for?!”
Cooper dives in next and surfaces beside me, eyes dark as the night he first brought me out here to his pool. Seeing that look has me sucking in a sharp breath. Cooper’s strong shoulders hover above the water as he swims closer, grabs my hips, and picks me up to wrap my legs around his waist. He smiles and kisses me softly, and I feel disoriented. What’s happening right now? Should I be mad? Because that’s definitely not the feeling I’m experiencing.