Always Yours (Roommate Duet 6)

I force a smile so he can’t sense my disappointment because they really are beautiful.

“Wow,” I say a little too eager. “I love them.”

Liam’s face drops, and I know he sees it written all over my face. He steps closer until the space between us is gone and tosses the box on the bed. “Goddammit, Maddie.” Cupping my face, he rests his forehead against mine, chuckling.

I’m very confused. My heart is pounding so hard, he can probably hear it over my harsh breathing.

“What?” I ask softly.

Then he retreats, grabs something from his back pocket, and gets down on one knee.

Oh my God.

What’s he doing now?

“Didn’t you learn from the last time you dug through my things?” He smirks, holds out a different velvet box, and opens it, revealing a diamond ring. “I should’ve known you’d find the decoy box.” Shaking his head, he reaches for my left hand and rubs the pad of his thumb over my knuckles. “I should make you wait since you snooped, but now I can’t.” Then he winks.

A gasp releases from my throat as I cover my mouth with my hand.

“Madelyn Grace Corrigan, my beautiful girlfriend, the love of my entire existence…” He leans in and kisses my knuckles. “You mean more to me than I could ever express, and I hope by now you know how much I love you. Before you, I wasn’t really living, and it wasn’t until you became mine that I had a real purpose. You gave me that. To look forward to every day just to wake up to your beautiful smile. To hear your contagious laugh. To kiss your soft skin. I can’t think of how life can truly get any better than you agreeing to marry me. So baby, will you take morning showers with me and let me kiss you to sleep every night for the rest of our lives? Marry me, please.”

“I don’t even know what to say…” I wipe tears that escaped from the most heartfelt thing I’ve ever heard. “Except yes!”

Liam immediately swoops me up, and I wrap my legs around his waist as I hold tightly around his neck. He lays me on the bed and covers my mouth with his. “This was supposed to be so much more romantic, just so you know.” His lips trail down my jawline. “Think roses, champagne, and being under the stars.” He moves down my neck. “But I knew you’d have a bad attitude for the next twenty-four hours if you thought I brought you up there to give you a pair of earrings.”

I laugh because he’s right. I would’ve been in a sour mood.

“Smart man,” I tell him, grabbing his face and planting my lips on his. “I can’t believe you just proposed!”

“I can’t believe it took me six months to find the courage.”

“Six months!”

“I had to ask your dad,” he says, leaning back. “So I flew out there.”

“What?” I squeal, sitting up on my elbows. “You flew out to Utah and asked my dad for his permission?”

I’m shocked.

Not that Liam would do the right thing, but that I had no idea. He does travel for work a lot, so it was probably easy to deceive me.

“Yep. Had a nice little chat.” Then he coughs. “Intimidating chat if I ever hurt you.”

Laughing, I wrap my arms around him and bring him closer. “I can’t believe how sneaky you were.”

“But apparently not sneaky enough.” Liam playfully rolls his eyes.

“That’s right. Remember that if you ever try hiding a secret from me again,” I tease.

“Next time, I’m blindfolding your ass and handcuffing you so you can’t see, touch, or snoop.”

“That sounds rather hot…We should practice that just in case.”

“Fuck, baby.” He palms my breast and squeezes. “I don’t want us to be late, and we have the next two days all to ourselves, so let’s go and enjoy being newly engaged.”

My eyes widen at the word. “Engaged. Wow. That sounds…so grown.” I laugh and think about the letter I just wrote Tyler. “Dammit, now I need to write Tyler another letter.”

Liam presses a kiss to my nose. “Don’t worry, he already knows.”

“What?” I screech, and Liam stands, pulling me up with him. “So I don’t even get to surprise him?”

“Don’t worry, I told him to act plenty surprised.”

I roll my eyes. “Please tell me my sisters don’t know. Can I at least tell them?”

“You really think I called up Sophie and Lennon and said, ‘Hey girls, I’m proposing to Maddie this weekend, but do me a favor and don’t tell her, okay?’” He arches a brow, and I chuckle. “I know neither of them can’t keep a secret to save their damn lives.”

“That’s true. They pretend they can, but they’d be dying to text me all weekend, waiting to hear the news.”

“Exactly.”

“I kinda want to mess with them…” I pause, placing a finger on my lips. “Tell them we got hitched on a whim or something.”