“Reed, you don’t have to say any more.”
He began shaking his head as he looked up at me. “I do. I need you to know everything because I never want there to be anything between us—ever.”
I took a deep breath and nodded my head.
“I kind of just lost it after that. I began drinking and partying more, and I hooked up with a bunch of girls those first few months after.”
My stomach felt sick at the idea of Reed sleeping around with a lot of women, but at the same time, I understood.
“I woke up one morning with a girl in my bed, and I decided right then and there that I needed to stop. The last thing I wanted to do was end up getting another girl pregnant. I stopped with the partying and concentrated only on college.” He turned and looked at me, sadness filling his eyes. “I’m so sorry. None of them meant anything to me, and I felt so guilty for using them all for sex. I never promised them anything, and they were all one-night stands. They meant nothing.”
“Reed, it was in the past. It was long before me, and it means nothing to me now. I love you.”
I placed my hand on his chest, and he closed his eyes as he sucked in a breath of air.
“I love you for the man you are today, not who you were in college. I’m so sorry for what you went through. I can’t even imagine.” I shook my head. My heart broke for Kelsey as well.
The next thing I knew, Reed was on his knees in front of me. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that another girl, who I didn’t even love, was the first to carry my child. That should have been you. I want the mother of my children to be you, Courtney. My only dream was to find you, the love of my life, the one girl I’d lay my life down for and do anything to make her happy. I don’t want my dream to be broken because of something I did in my past or for the stupid way I behaved.”
He began crying harder, and I dropped to my knees next to him.
I placed my hands on his face and made him look at me. “That will be me. That is me. Reed, I’m not going to take away the fact that a precious little angel in heaven would have been your first child, but we will have all our dreams come true, you and me together. I want nothing more than to give you your first child. I can’t wait to give you that gift. Reed, our dreams are no longer broken, not when we have this kind of love together. I love you so much.”
I began kissing him, and at first, he wasn’t responding. I moved my tongue along his lips, and he finally opened them up to me. Our kiss quickly turned passionate, and then it became something even more. I needed him to be inside me. I needed him to know how much I loved him and how I would always love him. Nothing would ever change that. I unbuttoned his pants and then pulled off his T-shirt.
“Courtney…” he whispered as he looked at me and pushed down his pants.
I smiled as I pulled my shirt up and over my head, and then I slipped my panties off from under my skirt. “I love you, Reed. I need to feel you inside me.”
He pressed his lips against mine and frantically began kissing me. He pulled away once and looked into my eyes. “I don’t deserve you.”
I reached down and began stroking his dick as I gave him the sexiest smile I could. “Oh, Mr. Moore, how wrong you are…how very wrong you are.”
He gently laid me back and pushed himself into me. He moved in and out slowly, and I was completely lost in his lovemaking. He kept repeating how much he loved me, and my heart broke at the idea of him being so scared of hurting me. I was so touched that he’d shared what happened with Kelsey, but at the same time, I was devastated for him, for all those years he’d carried around that guilt.
I wasn’t sure how long we lay there on the ground, wrapped up in each other. We talked for a bit more about what we both wanted.
“Maybe I should bring some items over to the cabin?”
He smiled so big and nodded his head like a child. “Why don’t you just move in?” he asked with a boyish grin on his face.
“We’ve only been officially going out for a few months. You don’t think it’s too soon to move in together?”
He smiled and said, “Nope.”
When he pulled away from me and began getting dressed, I sat up and just stared at him. Damn, how did I get so lucky with him? I reached for my clothes and started dressing. I was pretty sure that I was going to end up with grass burns from our little lovemaking session, but I didn’t care. It had been beyond perfect, and somehow, I thought it had helped Reed even more that we’d made love after all that he told me.
I stood up and looked around for the hair band that I’d had. I thought I’d wrapped it around my wrist. I turned around, about to ask Reed if he’d seen it, when I saw him down on one knee, holding a ring box.
Oh. My. God. Oh, holy hell. I placed one hand on my stomach as the other one came up to my mouth.
“Courtney, I had this all planned out, and I wanted to make it so special for you, but something just came over me, and I…well, shit…I couldn’t wait another minute. I love you, Courtney. I want to love you for the rest of my life. I want to wake up to you every morning and lie down next to you every night. I want to make love to you on our kitchen island as much as we want to. I want to sit with you on the back porch and watch you while you’re lost in one of your books. I want to see your stomach getting bigger with our kids, and hell, I even want to fight with you and then have make-up sex. I want the world for both of us, and more than anything, I want to make all your dreams come true. I want to be your Prince Charming, Courtney. I want to be your everything. Will you marry me?”
I stood there, stunned. I slowly dropped to my knees and looked into his eyes. He is dead serious. He is really asking me to marry him. My head started spinning. The logical side of my brain was telling me this was way too fast, and we needed to slow down. The romantic, crazy fool side of my brain was screaming for me to say yes. Yes! Yes! Yes!
“Um…Court…with you not really responding and all, I’m kind of getting really nervous that my unplanned, spur-of-the-moment proposal was a bad idea.”
I closed my eyes, and I did the one thing I’d never done before. I listened to my heart instead of my head. When I opened my eyes again, I smiled, causing Reed to flash me that drop-dead gorgeous smile of his. Even though we’d just made love, I wanted him again, more than ever.