“Doing what?” I place my hands on his chest, trying to ignore my arousal. We need to have this conversation, but it would be so easy for us to fall into bed.
“Tiptoeing. I’ve been doing it from the moment we met. I’ve been giving you time to heal. I knew you needed it, but you keep pushing me into this fucking friend zone and I’ve never wanted to be there. But I was afraid that was the only way I’d be able to keep you in my life. I was willing to have a small part of you rather than no part at all.”
“You don’t want to be my friend?”
He sucks in a deep breath, and I can tell he’s trying to choose his words wisely. Or maybe he’s losing his patience.
“No. I don’t make love to my friends, Lucy. I sure as hell don’t fuck them without condoms and try to marry them.” My face flushes with heat. His words might be crude, but they’re real. I open my mouth, but no words come out. “I love you.” He cups my face with his big hands. “I ran with that getting married shit because I wanted it so badly. I want you more than anything. I always have, and I can’t do this friends bullshit anymore. You’re mine, Lucy. In every fucking away. Friends is nothing compared to what I feel for you.”
My eyes fill with tears. For so long I wished that he would say these words to me.
“Soulmates,” I whisper. That’s what we are. I think on some level I’ve known that from the very start. I’d so easily fallen into a friendship with him. From the moment we met it had been easy to be close to him. To share my grief. He took it all in and healed me. “Why that night when I tried to kiss you did you stop me?”
“You were drunk. I wanted you to remember our first kiss.” I melt into him. Of course. Wyatt is a good man. “It looks as if someone is finally starting to put all the pieces together.” He smiles, looking as handsome as ever.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.”
“As long as you’re here, that’s all that matters.” He lifts me off his lap sitting me on the sofa. I watch as he slips down going to one knee. He pulls a box out of his pocket. I put my hands over my face trying not to burst into tears. “Lucy Loo.”
I slowly lower my hands to see the ring he’s holding in his fingers. The giant shiny pink diamond couldn’t be more me. The size of it is completely Wyatt.
“Will you…”
“Yes!” I launch myself at him. I kiss him everywhere I can get my mouth. He rolls us, pinning me to the floor.
“Give me your hand,” he orders in the dominant tone he always gets in the bedroom. I lift my hand for him to slip the ring onto my finger. It’s a perfect fit. “You and our family will always come first. There will never be another for me.”
I know he says that last part because my Wyatt knows I still have scars that my father left behind. He might not have set out to be my friend, but the reality is that bond we formed early on makes us know each other in the deepest of ways.
“I love you, Wyatt. More than I’ve ever loved anything in my whole life.”
“I love you too, my beautiful wife.”
“Not yet.” I smirk, making him growl. “But soon.”
“Very soon,” he vows, sealing it with a kiss.
Wyatt never needed a wife. He always needed me.
Epilogue
Wyatt
“Crystal, can you hand me the flour?”
“I don’t think this looks right.” My daughter eyes the dough on the counter. “It’s too hard.”
“I followed Eden’s instructions precisely.”
“I know, but I think it’s supposed to be smooth and soft, not a rock like this.” She knocks her fist against the lump.
“Once this bakes, it’ll soften up in the middle.”
“Dad, you’re great at law stuff, but you should leave the cooking stuff to the professionals. Why not just buy scones from Eden?”
“Mom’s scones are the best,” chimes in the brown-haired boy seated next to my eldest, Dre. Dre’s head is buried in his AP math. When he is focused on something, not even an earthquake would shake him.
“See?” Crystal says.
“What else would Liam say? That his mom’s food sucks? This is a biased opinion, and therefore I’m not giving it much weight.”
“Oh my God, Dad, we are not in a courtroom, and no one has ever said that Eden’s food sucks,” Crystal says.
“At least no one has said that and lived to tell about it,” jokes Liam. Crystal, my fifteen-year-old angel, meets Liam’s eyes for a half second before grabbing the flour and pushing it across the counter. I’d have to be sight impaired not to recognize a blooming crush. I wonder how much Eden would hate me if I murdered her son.