Page 128 of Stroked Hard
“Melony, are you in? Will you put faith in us? In me?”
The slow smile that takes over her face is mesmerizing. She is so beautiful. I have missed her so much. “Yes, Hollis. I’m in. I want us, too.”
I don’t give it a second thought, my hand grips the back of her neck, and I pull her in for a kiss, our mouths melding together, our love being sealed. This moment. Right here.Thiswill forever be branded in me, the day my girl first tells me she loves me. Just like the day Noah Calhoun kisses Allie on the dock, the rain pouring down on them, this is my fucking moment, in my best friend’s pool with peering eyes watching over us.
When I pull away, I keep my eyes on Melony and shout, “She loves me!” Everyone around us cheers; even Bodi, the grumpy bastard.
“Thank fuck,” Reese shouts. “We can stop bringing him ice cream every other day.”
“Ice cream?” Melony raises an eyebrow at me.
I pat my stomach. “I eat like a woman, you should know this by now.”
“How could I forget?” She laughs and pulls on my bottom lip. “So I told you I love you, what’s your edge on Noah Calhoun?”
Oh yeah, how could I forget?
“I don’t know if you can handle it, baby.”
“I can handle it,” she counters.
“I don’t know . . .”
She pokes my stomach, “Just tell me.”
“All right, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Clearing my throat, I say, “Melony, Boo and Bear, will you do me the honor of marrying me?”
Melony stares at me for a second, complete and utter shock on her face. I wait patiently for her answer.
I stare into her eyes, willing her to say yes when she slaps water right in my face and says, “You’re ridiculous.” She then floats away.
I pinch my nose, trying to get the chlorine out. “So I’m going to take that as a maybe?”
Floating in place, she turns to look at me and winks, “You can take that as a maybe.”
Well, fuck me, I better start ring shopping.
Epilogue
MELONY
“Have you seen these closets? Heeelloooooo,” Hollis shouts into the empty space. “Pretty sure you could murder someone in these closets and get away with it.”
“Do you plan on murdering anyone?” I ask, my eyes fixated on the vaulted ceilings.
“No, but if I wanted to, I could in these closets.” He pops his head out and then says, “Baby, we could totally stick a nursery in here.”
“Nursery is going in a room, not in a closet.”
“But if we wanted it in a closet, we could put a child in here.”
“You know there is more to this house than the walk-in closet, right? Like the view from the deck off the master bedroom.”
Hollis comes up behind me and puts his hand on my growing belly. A few weeks after Hollis proposed to me in Reese’s pool, I found out I was pregnant. Looks like my birth control wasn’t so effective after all. Looking back, it all makes sense to me: why I was so sick to my stomach all the time, why I was so emotional. I now tell Hollis my indecision when it came to us was all due to the baby. He doesn’t believe one word of it. He likes to think that we were bound to have our ups and downs because according to him, what is love without an epic story to go with it?
Sigh, he really is a romantic.And he really is mine.
Once I came to my senses, lowered the shield around my heart and let Hollis in, life has been wonderful. Sure, we’ve had our fights, stupid ones of course. We’ve gone to bed angry, only for Hollis to wake up in the middle of the night and demand make-up sex. I swear, sometimes he picks fights just for the make-up sex. He doesn’t think I know, but I do.
