A Deal with the Devil (The Grumpy Devils, #1)

by Elizabeth O'Roark

“I think half of adulthood is pretending to have your shit together when you clearly don’t.”

“I wish my husband would look at me the way he looks at you,” Linda whispers. “Like he could be completely content if he never had to look at anything else.” I glance at her—she is lovely in her own right, more than deserving of an appreciative husband—and my heart gives an odd, hard thud at her words. It’s the ache of wanting something to be true and knowing full well it is not. “I’m just his assistant,” I reply. “He looks at me like that because if I wasn’t around, he’d have to get his own coffee and he finds waiting at Starbucks intolerable.” “I just watched the way he looked at you, honey,” she says with a knowing smile. “And believe me, that look had nothing to do with coffee.”

I let him drive me to my apartment. We climb the stairs, saying nothing. And with every step, I’m realizing all the experiences with him I’ll never have again. He’ll never wait at the counter for another smoothie, his gaze on my ass the entire time. I’ll never see his face light up as I walk into his office, catch that relieved smile when he sees me waiting for him at the end of the day. Never again will he undress me, growling some complaint about how I’m wearing too many clothes as he moves me toward the bed.

Tears drip down my face as I stare at those words. And they continue to fall as I sit, helpless, wanting to say a thousand things in response. I want to tell him I love him, that I wish I’d never left, that I’d give anything to be back there. I want to ask if there’s any chance he’d be willing to wait for me, but I’m not brave enough.

“I’ve been in love with you, I think, since the day I saw you reading in the rain as you walked into work,” he says. He presses the box to my palm and covers it with his own. His eyes hold mine, and there’s an urgency there, as if nothing in the world matters more than my answer. He swallows. “Marry me. Please marry me.”