Office Pet

“Where’s your necklace?” he asked motioning his head towards my chest. “You’ve never taken it off before.”

“I don’t need it anymore. I’m done with luck charms. They don’t seem to work anyways.” I put my hands on my hips. “Why are you here Kane?”

He ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. “Linda’s trial is set for next month. A company lawyer should be in touch soon for your statement.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know, we’ve already talked. Anything else?”

The pained look was back in his eyes. “I love you, Reese. I mean it. I want us to go back to what we had. What I did was wrong, and I’ll never forgive myself, but I need you to forgive me.”

If I forgave him and told him everything was okay, what would that mean? Would it mean he’d think he could walk all over me for the rest of our lives?

For the second time since this mess began, he fell to his knees. “Marry me, Reese. Let me spend eternity making this up to you. I’ll never forgive myself for hurting you in the way I did. I don’t want to spend my life without you. Our time together showed me what was missing in my life. I want to love and to be loved. There’s no color without you. There’s no laughter without you.”

He was breaking my heart all over again.

“We can be each other’s good luck charms,” he said.

“I thought you didn’t believe in luck.”

“The night in the art gallery was the luckiest few hours of my life. You know I’m not superstitious, but since the day you left, my luck has changed for the worst. I feel as if everything is falling apart.”

Forgiving him would be so easy but would it be the right thing to do?

“The intensity of my feelings for you scared the shit out of me. After Sadie died, I didn’t think I’d ever fall in love again. Didn’t think I wanted to, but then you came along. I thought I could keep you at arm’s length. Have you as someone I could go to when I needed a release, but you made me want to love, to share my life with someone, to have a family. Every night I want to go to bed with you, and every morning, I want to wake up with you. Say you’ll take me back.”

I rolled my lips between my teeth, needing a few seconds to compose myself. My body and heart ached for him, but my mind warned me to stay away.

“Promise me, Kane. Promise if you ever have any doubts about me or about us, you’ll talk to me first. If this is going to work, we have to trust one another implicitly. Promise me that.”

“I promise,” he whispered. “I promise from this day forward nothing in my life will be as important as you are. Your happiness—our happiness—is number one.”

I knelt in front of him and took his hands in mine. “I love you, Kane McKenzie. I’m sorry for the pain you endured after losing Sadie. Maybe the universe did bring us together. Maybe luck brought us together. Maybe it didn’t. But yes, I’ll marry you. I love you more than you’ll ever realize. I tried to hate you, wanted to hate you, but I couldn’t.”

Tears swam in his big brown eyes, but he was too much of a man to let them fall. He cupped his hands around my cheeks and pressed his lips to mine. “You’ve made me the happiest man alive, and I’ll spend the rest of my life showing just how thankful I am that you came into my life.”

He leaned forward and kissed me. It was a kiss that felt like home.

Epilogue

Reese

It was lightly snowing, but it wouldn’t last for long. Spring was coming to New York, this was likely our last snow of the season, and it was happening on my wedding day.

Kane and I didn’t wait long at all after he popped the question. Just two weeks was all we needed to throw together our rooftop ceremony with just a few family members and friends in attendance. Plans come together quickly when money is no object.

I applied my red lipstick and smiled at myself in the mirror. I looked exactly the way I wanted to. Melissa had kindly offered up her office for my dressing room. Kane and I had decided that the rooftop balcony of McKenzie Tech was the perfect place for our thrown together ceremony, so offices were quickly re-appropriated for dressing and guest waiting areas.

I heard a slight gasp behind me. “Oh, honey, you look so beautiful!” my mom gushed at me. She got up from the gray couch and moved to stand behind me. “I’m so proud of you, baby,” she said tucking a few stay strands of my hair into the elaborate updo the stylist had put it in. “I always knew you would find your true love.”