Page 196 of Top Shelf

His thumb sweeps beneath my eye even though I’m not crying. Yet.

“One day, min fru, we will be old and gray, and I will look at this photograph and remember how lucky I was to marry you.” He huffs a small laugh, but his eyes remain impossibly tender. “And if I could go back and live my life a hundred times, I would find you sooner in every one of them so I could love you longer.”

Oh, fuck.

“Viktor,” I whisper, heat flooding my cheeks. “There are people here.”

“I know.”

“Several of them.”

His eyes crease at the sides. “I can see them.”

Behind him, someone makes a sobbing sound that is almost definitely Carina.

I narrow my eyes at him. “You’re enjoying this now.”

“No, baby.” His mouth softens before he bends and kisses me, slow and shameless and entirely too tender for an audience. “I am enjoying my wife.”

Oh he is gonna get punished and laid so hard later.

He kisses my forehead, then turns toward the photograph as though it’s suddenly extremely urgent and points to the wall. “Here.”

I blink, still recovering. “What?”

“I want it hung right here.”

“Like… right here? In the living room? You haven't even seen what it'll look like on the other walls.”

“I do not need to.” He looks at the photograph again, and his smile returns. “I want everyone who comes into our home to see how I look at my wife.”

Oh, for fuck's sake.

My heart does a stupid little kick. “Okay.”

Viktor looks at Reid. “Can you help me hang it?”

I stare between them, then back at the wall. “What, right now?”

“Yes.”

“Viktor, you have a twenty-three-step moving plan.”

“This is more important.”

A laugh bursts out of me. “Oh my god, your system lasted less than I did.”

“It remains an excellent system.”

Ten minutes later, Viktor, Reid and Rhys are measuring the wall while Chase holds a level upside down and insists this is still helping. Carina and Zoe have abandoned the kitchen completely to supervise, and Nia remains on video from the coffee table, offering opinions no one requested.

Mila stands beside Rhys while he holds the frame against the wall.

“Higher,” she says.

He lifts it an inch.

“Little more.”