False Start (Red Zone Rivals, #5)

by Kandi Steiner

“I’m scared,”

“But I’m sure, too. I’m sure about you. I’m sure about us. I’m sure about this.”

“I was a father!” I cried, shaking, my neck heated. “I was a father, and you stole that from me.”

Omg I’m crying

“Need you,” I rasped against her mouth each time I claimed it. “Need you so fucking much.”

“I’m here,”

I never would have left you if I’d known. I would have stayed. I love you.

I will protect you. I will love you. I will never leave you again. You are mine.

You take care of everyone else. Let me take care of you.

“Kyle, you wouldn’t be there. You—”

“Yes, I will be.” He swallowed, his eyes flicking between mine. “As long as you say yes.”

“Say…...

“Marry me.”

Zeke held a candle and wore a comforting grin, and Riley handed me the card in her hands.

On the front, in Kyle’s handwriting, it said I loved you then…

pulling out an old, origami folded note that we’d passed back and forth in high school. The pencil marks on it were faded, but I could still make out the words, from where we just talked about our weekends to where we shamelessly flirted and made promises of making out when we got alone.

Clay handed me another envelope.

I loved you from afar…

My shaking hands covered my mouth again when I saw what was inside — a flash fiction narrative I’d had published in SmokeLong Quarterly...

Julep handed me the third envelope.

I loved you when I tried to hate you…

thumbing the matchbox from Rains where we’d eaten that night I decided to t...

The last envelope was in Leo’s hands, and he crooked a grin at me before handing it over.

And I love you now. Still. Always.

I opened this one and found a photo of me, Kyle, and Sebastian. It was one Kyle had snapped on his phone when we’d set up the sprinkler in the backyard and made a day of running thr...

“Madelyn, I knelt before you just like this only hours ago, but it was in haste. It was in desperation to protect you, to assure you that you weren’t alone, to prove that you had me by your side.” He shook his head. “And while all of those things are true, they’re nowhere near the top of my list when it comes to why I want to make you my wife.”

“In this life of mine, I have only loved you. Even when I wanted so desperately to hate you, it was impossible. You have known me, the true core of me, since I was just fifteen years old. We grew up together. We grew apart. And somehow, in a crazy turn of events, or maybe… fate,” he said with a wry grin. “The universe brought us together again.”

“I love you,

“God, I love you fiercely. I love you in a way that would kill me if I wasn’t allowed to act out this love every day of my life. I love your passion and your heart. I love your fight. I love your determination. I loved you as a friend, as my first love, as my first… everything. And I love you even more now, as a mom, as a woman who has worn the weight of the world on her shoulders.”

“But I don’t want you to shoulder that weight alone, anymore. I want to bear it with you. I want your mornings, and your afternoons, and every single night. I want to wake up to your morning breath and fall asleep to the sound of your snores.”

“I brought you here because I saw the way you lit up when we toured this house, and I’d be willing to bet my life that it was because you saw what I saw.”

“You saw us. You saw our things in this home, saw us playing with Sebastian here, saw us growing old together. I felt it just as much as you did — and it’s what I want. You are what I want.”

“I meant what I said this morning,” Kyle proclaimed, his shoulders back, eyes on mine. “Marry me, Madelyn. Move in with me. Start a new life with me. I know I come with a lot of fanfare. I can’t promise you won’t want to throttle the paparazzi sometimes, that the media won’t want a piece of you and, yes, a piece of Sebastian, too. But I promise I will protect you from them and only allow as much attention as you want. If you want to watch me play, I’ll have seats for you and Sebastian both. If you never want to step foot in a stadium, then I’ll rush home to you after each and every game.

BRO IM CRYING OMG

“And I don’t know what happens next with Marshall, but I know whatever it is, we can face it together. And I can promise you that I’ll do everything in my power to ensure that Sebastian is never taken from you.

“More than anything, I promise to love you. With everything that I am. With every breath I have left. Forever. Because honestly, even if you say no, that’s the ...

“Marry me, Mads.”

“I love you, too,” I breathed against his lips. “I have never stopped.”

“It’s me and you now,” he said between kisses. “Me. And you.”

“You are not allowed to say his name again. The only name I want to hear coming from these pretty lips is your future husband’s.”

TUH!

“Yes, fiancé?”

“I love you,”

“I love you, too.”

“I hope you know I’ll never get tired of hearing that.”

“I’ll check in on that in ...

“Go right ahead. It’ll still be true. And ten years after that, and ten years after that, and...

All I want you to know is that in the past couple of months, I have come to love that little boy like…”

“You love him like your own,”

“Kyle,”

“I’m pregnant.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck if this was planned or not. You just… you just made me the happiest fucking man in the world.”

“I was scared to tell you that when I was waiting for the result to show, I was praying for a positive. I wanted it. I wanted to be pregnant. God, am I a nutcase?”