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“Graham told me about the tattoo, honey.” She flinches, either at the reminder or the endearment, but it’s something so I keep pushing. “I’m honored, Cara. I’m so damn honored I was the one chosen to put Jimmy’s words on Graham’s skin. He came in today, told me all about it, why you were out with him and not your parents, and I gotta say, I thought your parents were dicks before, but they’re completely off the charts with their maneuvering last night, but Graham is cool. He and I are cool. I’m fucking thrilled I was the one to do his tattoo and I’m glad you saw it. I’m glad you love it.”

Tears spill down her cheeks and she wipes them away when all I want to do is take them from her, and then ensure I never give her a reason to cry again.

“I’m honored you’re falling in love with me, Cara. I’m sorry I took that and fucked it up, but give me a chance. Please.”

She shakes her head. I can feel my chance slipping from my fingers.

“I can’t, Braxton. I’ve got someone else to think about right now, someone more important than either me or you, and last night is a vivid reminder we hardly know each other.”

Fuck that.

“I know I love you.”

She jumps, blinks, and looks at me. “What?” Confusion wrinkles her brow and I all but laugh. “You can’t.”

“I can. I do. I always will. I fell in love with you the first night we were together, Cara. For months I was unable to get you out of my head, wanting to get your number and call you. But then I kept remembering how you ran from me and were embarrassed that you slept with some guy like me. You’re sorry you did that, and I get it, as much as it hurt, and I’m not comparing the two. I’m not, I swear it. But when Stella came to me with all her bullshit and it became my bullshit, that’s what I was thinking. Thinking you were someday going to run off on me again and then when I saw you with Graham, that’s all I could think of…that you’d done it, you found someone your family would approve of, that you’d finally get their approval and your happy family, and I’d just be the guy whose rubber broke inside you one night.”

“Braxton—”

“I know it’s stupid.” I take her hand and squeeze it. “I just want you to know where my head was, but that doesn’t change that I love you. I do love you. Falling in love with you was so damn easy for me I didn’t even realize it was happening.”

“You’re such an idiot,” she says, and she shoves off the couch yanking her hand from mine.

Notexactlythe reaction I was hoping to hear.

“What?”

“You!” She spins at me, pointing a circle in my direction. “You’re an idiot! You’re the dumbest man in the world if you think that I would run off with some guy just to make my parents happy. Haven’t I proven to you that I don’t care what they say anymore? Don’t you remember me telling you if they were rude to me I’d leave and come tell you? I went to that dinner last night fully intent on walking away from them forever, because I was so certain of us that they no longer matter. And then…”

She trails off, shaking her head. Her hands go to her hips and she laughs. “God. We’re a disaster.”

“We’re not.” I push off the couch and I walk to her, covering her hands with mine on her hips, and I hold her close, firmly too so she can’t run. “We’re not a disaster, Cara. We’re a work in progress.”

She laughs softly and her forehead collapses onto my chest.

Best fucking feeling in the entire world, having her leaning into me and not shoving me away.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, pressing my lips to her head. “I’m so damn sorry about last night. But I do love you. I’m in love with you. I want you and I want us to start a family and I know we haven’t been together long, but it doesn’t make it wrong either.”

She shakes her head against my chest and I keep talking. “Forgive me. Or at least try to. Come home with me tonight and let me just hold you because last night without you by my side fucking sucked. We’ll get past this. All couples fight and argue, and I guarantee you we’ll do it again, and I’ll be an idiot again and probably an asshole at least a dozen times, but we can get past them too.”

“You sound so sure.”

She might not sound sure, but she pulls her hands from beneath mine and slides them to my back.

God. Her hands on me have never felt so damn good and my shoulders relax for the first time all day.

“I’m sure because I love you, and you love me.”

“I don’t.”

Bullshit. Instead of calling her on it, I yank my phone out of my back pocket, pull up the photos and find the one where she was gazing up at Graham…like she loved him.

Except now I know that’s about the time Graham said she admitted to him she lovedme.

I hold the phone down in her line of sight so she can see it.

Now that I know the context, I love the damn photo.