Best Fake Fiance (Loveless Brothers 2)

“They’re good, but I’m not sure they’re everything,” I say.

“I mean I’ve fulfilled your requirements,” he says, counting on his fingers. “You already got free beer, Seth agreed to do your taxes, we’re going backpacking with Caleb next month, and Eli made you meatballs.”

“You still haven’t let me win at horseshoes,” I point out.

“We haven’t played horseshoes,” he says. “Besides, I don’t think I’m good enough at horseshoes to let you win. Everything I do in that game is completely accidental.”

I sigh and lean my head against his shoulder.

“Same,” I admit. “It’s a stupid game.”

I tap the engagement ring against my mojito glass idly, a habit I’ve developed over the past two months. I glance down as it catches the fading light of the sunset, flaring with internal fire.

Suddenly, I remember the last thing that was on my list of demands.

“We never had the world’s most amicable breakup, either,” Daniel says, putting his hand on my back, tucking his body against mine as we watch the sunset together.

“I can let that one slide,” I say, looking down again. “Though I should probably give the ring back to your mom, and we can tell the gossips that, I don’t know, we’re still together but not getting married because we don’t believe in putting labels on relationships or something.”

I tap it against the glass again, leaning into Daniel, the fuzzy feeling of contentment floating through my body. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, his thumb just idly stroking my lower back.

“It was a joke,” I say, turning my head toward him, though now I’m just talking to a pec because his chin is resting on top of my head. “I think labels are useful.”

“What if we didn’t?” he says suddenly.

“Use labels?”

“Give the ring back.”

“I can’t just keep it, your mom would kill me.”

“Not if we were really engaged.”

He pulls back, turns to face me, his hand still on my hip, and I stare up at him.

It’s still him. Even if our relationship has been flipped upside down and then right side up in the past two months, it’s still Daniel. He looks the same, he sounds the same. When we talk, he talks the same and he acts the same, and thank God for all of it because if we had lost anything we had, I’d have been heartbroken.

But we didn’t. We added, multiplied, built on the bedrock foundation that we’d laid down over the years.

And I think he just asked me to marry him.

“Too soon?” he says, his eyes running over my face, taking in my surprised silence.

I look into his eyes like I’m diving into a perfect blue lagoon, and I realize I don’t know how long I’ve been in love with him. I’m not even sure whether I count that time in weeks, months, or years.

“No,” I say. “It’s been eighteen years.”

“Then will you marry me?”

He gets down on one knee. He literally does that as I’m standing there, still feeling one step behind, still trying to trace how we went from meatballs to proposal as he takes my hand, slides the ring off. I’m still holding a mojito as he turns the ring slowly in his fingers, and my heart feels like it’s blooming.

“Charlie?” he asks, and I realize I haven’t actually said anything yet.

“Yes!” I say. “Yes, Daniel, of course yes.”

He slides the ring back on my finger, kisses my knuckles, stands. He takes my face in one hand and kisses me, and I wonder for half a second if a really-engaged kiss will be different from all the others, but it’s not.

It’s just as good.

“I love you,” I murmur, our lips still touching.

“I love you back,” he says.

It’s a tender kiss, a slow kiss, lit by the last rays of the sunset, a kiss that’s got all the time in the world.

Slowly, I step in. Slowly, my body presses against his, harder, tighter, his warmth bleeding into my skin through our clothes. The kisses quicken, deepen, grow more urgent because it doesn’t matter how much time we have right now, it matters that most of our moments are stolen, brief, and that’s made us ravenous for each other.

Daniel pulls back, his lips an inch from mine. I gaze up, the fingers of one hand already twined through his belt loop, pulling him toward me, the other wound around the back of his neck. He’s got one palm flat against my back and he gazes down at me, an expression in his eyes I can’t read.

Carefully, slowly, his thumb traces my bottom lip, a look of total concentration on his face. Then he follows his thumb with his lips, his tongue, taking my head in his hand and holding me to him, so tight I can barely move but I open my mouth under his anyway, aching for him.