Page 48 of Consummation (The Josh & Kat Trilogy #3)

Thirty-One

Josh

I’ve been lying here in the dark, spooning Kat’s sleeping body, for over an hour—but sleep won’t come, no matter how many Venezuelan sheep I try to count.

Fuck .

I carefully extricate myself from Kat’s long limbs, slip quietly out of the bed, and pad into the moonlit suite.

After grabbing a water bottle from the fridge, I head out to a large balcony overlooking pre-dawn Caracas, expecting to grab a few minutes of insomnia-laden solitude.

But I’m surprised to find I’m not alone out on the balcony.

“Jonas?”

My brother turns around in his chair. “Hey,” he says softly.

“What are you doing out here, bro?”

“Same as you, I’m sure,” he says. “I can’t sleep.”

“You want something from the fridge?” I ask, holding up my water bottle.

Jonas holds up a glass in his hand.

I sit in a wicker chair next to my brother and look out at the skyline. “Why can’t you sleep?” I ask.

Jonas shrugs. “I’ve had chronic insomnia my whole life. This time, luckily, I’ve got happy insomnia—I can’t stop thinking about how happy I am.” He smiles. “You?”

I run my hand through my hair and exhale. “I’ve been wanting to tell you about this, actually. I’ve decided to pop the question to Kat—and I can’t figure out how the fuck to do it.”

“Really? Congrats. That’s great. When are you gonna do it?”

“As soon as I can get a ring and figure out how the fuck to do it right this time. There’s no margin for error—failure isn’t an option. ”

Jonas looks genuinely elated. “Well, do you have any ideas? Bounce ’em off me—I’ll help you figure it out.”

“Dude, I have no idea how to do it—that’s why I’ve got insomnia.

I can’t just, you know, take her to dinner and pull out a ring or take her to a basketball game and ask her on the fucking Jumbotron.

Whatever I do, it’s gotta be big .” My stomach clenches.

“Honestly, I’m kind of freaking out about it, bro.

I asked Kat once and totally fucked it up.

I gotta do it right this time or I dunno if she’ll give me a third bite at the apple.

” I rub my forehead. “Kat didn’t just turn me down the first time—she got pissed .

And even worse than that, she got her feelings hurt.

I’m the first man in the history of the world to ask a woman to marry him and make her feel shitty about it. ”

Jonas grimaces. “How’d you manage that?”

I shrug. “I have no fucking idea.”

“Come on. You must have an idea what you did wrong. How’d you ask her? You never told me any details. All I know is your proposal didn’t include the words ‘I love you.’”

I shake my head, not wanting to relive it.

“Tell me, Josh. We gotta figure this out.”

I begrudgingly tell Jonas every detail of how that night at the hospital went down.

“And then the whole next week, I felt so rejected and bummed and confused, I actually told myself I was done with her,” I say, rolling my eyes at the absurd thought.

“And the most aggravating part was she kept calling me ‘Mr. Darcy,’ and I have no idea why.”

“You mean from Pride and Prejudice ?” Jonas asks.

“Why the fuck do you know that? I had to Google that shit to figure it out.”

Jonas shrugs.

“You amaze and appall me,” I say. “But we’re off track here. The point is, I fucked it up and Kat said no and I’ve never felt so rejected in all my life. For both our sakes, I couldn’t handle a repeat performance. I have to do it right this time.”

“Yeah, well, proposing in a hospital waiting room when the girl’s sitting vigil for her brother definitely doesn’t sound like a story Kat would wanna ‘tell her grandchildren one day’—unless, of course, you want her to tell her future grandchildren ‘The Story of How Grandpa was a Dumbshit.’ ”

“The scary thing is I truly didn’t realize I was fucking up at the time—I thought I deserved a fucking medal for being so honorable.”

“Well, that’s the problem right there. Women don’t want honorable—they want love.”

“Yeah, I know that now. Duh. Now I realize Kat just wanted to hear me say ‘I love you’ and ‘you’re the woman of my dreams’ and all that—okay, I get it—but at the time I was too freaked out to say any of that.

But still, I’m not sure why she punched me so fucking hard in the balls.

She could have just said ‘no thanks’—that would have been sufficient, thank you very much.

But not Kat. Of course, not. She was livid , man—and, honestly, I still don’t fully understand why.

Which means I could totally piss her off again and fuck it up completely and not even realize I’m doing it. ”

“Well, duh, Josh. You seriously don’t know why?”

I shrug.

“Josh, you made Kat feel like you were doing her a fucking favor by marrying her—like she was the lucky one. No woman wants to feel like that, especially when a man’s proposing to her—she wants to feel like a princess out of a fairytale. She wants to feel like the grand prize.”

“Holy fuck, Jonas. That’s exactly what she said. Exactly .” I close my eyes, chastising myself. “How is it possible you know more about this than I do?”

“Because I’ve watched Pride and Prejudice and Fools Rush In and a bunch of other chick flicks—and those movies tell a guy everything he needs to know about the female psychology, you dumbshit.”

“Well, I fully realize I’m the lucky one now, believe me—I’d be the luckiest bastard in the world to call Kat Morgan my wife.”

“Well, just tell her that, then. Perfect.”

“No, that ship has sailed man,” I say. “I’ve gotta bring out the big guns now—this is round two, bro. I need a whole lot more than a good proposal—I need a shit-ton more than ‘I love you’—I need redemption. ”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Jonas says.

He squints, clearly thinking hard about something.

I’ve seen this look on my brother’s face a thousand times when he’s poring over an acquisition report and crunching numbers in his head.

“Okay. If you wanna crack Kat’s secret code, you gotta figure out what makes her tick.

For Sarah, it was overcoming her lifelong fears and finally letting go completely.

That was the key with her—making her surrender and let go.

So, first off, I took Sarah to the top of a thirty-foot, underground waterfall in Belize and made her jump off.

That was stage one. And, then, when I finally proposed to her, I took her to the highest mountaintop in Greece and made her jump off and paraglide down to the beach.

” He chuckles, apparently at some memory.

“I made Sarah face her fears and let go and, man, it was fucking epic. You’ve just gotta figure out how to do the same for Kat.

Unlock her. Figure out her secret code and crack her.

And that’s how you’ll deliver her unto pure ecstasy in the way the ancient Greeks defined that word—’the culmination of human possibility. ’”

I roll my eyes. My brother is such a fucking freak. “Well, Kat’s not afraid of a goddamned thing,” I say. “I could take her to the top of a waterfall and she’d cannonball off it, honking her boobs as she plummeted down.”

Jonas laughs. “Well, then, fine—overcoming fear clearly isn’t the ticket with Kat. But there’s got to be something that will unlock Kat’s deepest desires—something her soul is desperately yearning for.”

I’m silent.

“Well?” Jonas says.

“I’m thinking,” I say.

“Don’t strain yourself.”

I laugh.

“Hey, you’re wise and powerful, remember?

” Jonas says. “Even if Kat’s not scared of a damned thing, she’s gotta be scarred by something—or maybe secretly yearning for something.

Think . What’s buried deep, deep, deep inside that woman’s heart and soul?

Figure it out, unlock it, and deliver it to her on a silver platter—bigger and better than she’d ever imagine—and that’s how you’ll give her a proposal she’ll ‘tell her grandchildren about.’”

I wince. “When I said that to you at Uncle William’s house, I never thought in a million years it would come back to bite me in the ass.”

“Well, it has. So take your own advice. Your exact words were, ‘If you’re gonna surprise the girl, then make sure you blow her socks off. This is the story she’s gonna be telling her grandkids one day.

So don’t fuck it up,’” Jonas says. “That’s exactly what you said to me.

” He brings his glass to his lips and surveys the twinkling Caracas skyline.

“So now it’s time to walk the walk, motherfucker. ”

I lean back in my chair, my mind reeling. “Shit,” I say. “I seriously have no idea what to do.”

“Well, whatever it is, you’ve got to pull out all the stops.”

“Fuck,” I say, feeling suddenly panicked. “Kat said she wouldn’t marry me if I were the last man on earth, Jonas. Help me, man. I need to trick that demon-woman into saying yes.”

Jonas laughs. “You’ve tricked her pretty well so far.”

I scowl at him.

“Don’t worry, Josh,” Jonas says soothingly. “We’ll figure this out. She’s but a mortal woman and you’re a wise and powerful demi-god. We’ll topple her.”

“Thank you, Jonas,” I say, feeling mildly comforted. “So where do I start?”

“Well, let’s start with the basics,” Jonas says. “You gotta tell her you love her this time.”

“Thank you, Einstein.”

“And you gotta get her a ring so big it sears her fucking corneas.”

I nod. “Yet again, not rocket science.”

“You say that but you weren’t already planning to do that, were you?” Jonas says.

“Yes, I was. Duh . I’m gonna get Kat a ring so big, she’s gonna need a fucking crane to carry it around.”

Jonas laughs. “Good boy.”

I swig my water, my mind reeling. Fuck me. I’ve got to get this exactly right.

“So what else are you thinking?” Jonas says. “‘Whatever you do, it’s gotta be rock solid, man—it’s got to be a homerun. There’s absolutely no room for failure.’”