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Tate is standing at the bottom of the stairs in nothing but a pair of denim jeans and his silver crucifix. His torso is the best colour I have ever seen, like piping hot caramel.
He’s eyeing up my little stacks of books. Thank God he’s far enough away from them to make the titles illegible. Then he glances over at the bed, a crumpled mess with my current read enthroned on the pillow like a little smut shrine.
“Are you coming, River?” I decide to risk my life. “To watch you get beaten by thirty other men on motorcycles? Of course I am.”
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” he says. It sounds like he’s pleading.
“Put this back on. Right now.” I pluck the jumper from his hand and then drop it back to the dirt. “River, what the fuck are you thinking?” Wow, he really is like a dad. “Tate cannot see you like this,” Mitch says. “In fact, Tate cannot see other people seeing you like this. He’s going to go insane.”
“You don’t have to come to see me every day anymore - it’s not fair to you. I’m going to start planning things. I want to spoil you.” Then he looks up at me with a playful smile. “Are you going to let me spoil you, River?”
“You are my prey. But you’re also-” He fishes out the chain from under his shirt and holds the cross pendant up to me. “-the answer to all of my prayers.”
“What tattoo are you going to get?” I ask, my voice trembling only a little. “Your name, across my knuckles,” he replies immediately. I laugh again because I think that he’s joking, but he isn’t laughing with me.
“I don’t know how to talk to you anymore. I don’t really want to talk to you anymore. But when I do start talking to you, I feel like I’m talking to the old you, and that makes it easier. But then that makes it harder, because I shouldn’t want to talk to you. You became a really unforgiveable person, and I don’t know if I want to let that go, even if you were only sixteen.”
“I like that you lit a candle for me,” I say, watching him wipe down a surface with a dampened cloth. He glances up at me, his eyes bright, and he smiles a little. “I do that a lot,” he says.
“River, please,” he whispers, his voice stifled and thick in his throat. “I can be better, I can do more. I thought that you wanted me too.”
“You touched her? You touched my girl, huh? And now you’re waiting outside my truck as if I’m not about to fuck you up?”
“I’ve wanted you for my entire life. I’ve been in love with you for my entire life. Can’t you see this? Can’t you see what we have? We won’t ever find this with another person – I know that I won’t. It’s only going to ever be like this with you, River.”
“I’ve loved you forever baby, and I have no intentions of stopping. You made me a better man than I ever thought I could be, and I want to live the rest of my life with you. Only with you. So please will you do me the honour of being my lawfully wedded wife?”
