“Let me go,” she demanded. Another push, but he was rock solid. “I’m not kidding, Rick. Let me go now!”
“Not until I finish what I was saying first. Look, I’m not happy. Happy? Shit, I was happy the day you first snarled at me, my frisky little kitten. I never hoped for more than that from you, because, honestly? I never thought you’d give me another look. When you did, when you went to the coffeehouse with me, I was over the damn moon. Then you came home with me and, well, that’s when I got a little bit excited.
“Okay, no, I wanna be completely honest here, Tiger. I was excited—constantly excited, trust me—ever since the first time I had to show you self-defense techniques. I just couldn’t show you how much you affected me because it wouldn’t be right. I was supposed to help you, not help myself to you. But once you gave me a hint you were interested? No holding back, right? I didn’t have to hold back. And that made me feel whole. Not shattered, not broken. Complete. And that’s so much better than happy.”
Grace felt tears well up in her eyes. Her bottom lip started to tremble. Blaming her pregnancy hormones for how quickly she jumped to the wrong conclusion, she leaned her forehead into his wide chest. “Oh, Rick, I—”
“Hush, Grace. It’s my turn now. Let me finish. Okay?” When she nodded into his chest, he loosened his hold on her arms. Grace immediately wrapped them around his middle, giving him a tight squeeze. He squeezed her back.
Rick continued, “I’ve felt every kind of good feeling a man can feel since I’ve known you. The day you said you’d marry me? I figured that was it. It couldn’t get any better than this. But now? You tell me that we’re having a baby, that our small family is already growing? And then you ask me if I’m happy. I’m not. I can’t be. Because saying I’m happy puts me right back to the man I was when we first met. And right now? There’s not even a word for how fucking ecstatic I am. Happy? Not even close.”
Releasing her, Rick roamed his hands up her side, stopping when he reached her shoulders. His gruff voice seemed to vibrate with powerful emotion as he spoke again.
“My heart is so big, it’s like it could burst out of my chest. And, if it did? I’d be sure to hand it right over to you. You have my heart, my beautiful, brave Tiger. As battered and as broken as it might be, it’s yours.”
My heart is in your hands.
Grace shook it off. She still had nightmares about Tommy, and knew she always would, but she wouldn’t let his ghost creep in on what was an intimate moment between her and her lover.
Tommy was her past. Rick was her forever.
She understood that now.
“I don’t just want your heart,” she said honestly. “I’m greedy, Rick. I want everything you have.”
“You already have it. And, still, I’ll find more to give you.”
Rick tucked his chin into his chest, then reached out to tilt Grace’s head back before he leaned down to meet her. A soft kiss, his lips barely touching hers. Grace felt the tears stinging in her eyes. Rick was right, too. They weren’t happy tears. They were more than that.
She smiled. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. More, I need you. With me, no matter where. No matter what.” He slipped his hand in between their body, the tips of his fingers caressing the bottom of her belly. “Both of you. I need both of you.”
Rick had confessed his feelings to her before. The night he showed up, still half-drunk, and the night he first brought her to his house. He even told her he loved her well before his Valentine’s Day proposal.
But this? To hear her former Marine admit to needing her after he’d spent too many years certain he could only depend on himself and his brothers, Grace felt her heart shatter in that instant, only to be reformed into something harder, something stronger, and something that he would never, ever break.
Still, she had to make sure. “For always?”
She met his gaze and saw... something there, something shining in the dark depths. It hit her an instant later.
Grace saw love.
Rick leaned in, his words a whisper against the corner of her mouth before he sealed his promise with a kiss:
“I’ll never stop.”