Page 44 of Forever Finds Us (Wisper Dreams #7)

Chapter Thirty-Five

Roxanne

Brand dropped to his knees in front of me and reached up to set his hat on the counter next to me.

I’d heard his voice at the front door, talking to Drew, and I panicked. My sisters all saw the look on my face and the way my hands began to shake, and instantly they knew who had paid the Fitts household a visit.

When I saw him for the first time in almost a month, he was so handsome that it took me a minute to remember how to speak to ask him what the hell he was doing at my parents’ house on Christmas freaking Eve.

And now his hands clutched my hips, his breathtaking face and excited sky-blue eyes tipped up and trained on me, and it felt like he’d infused me with some kind of calming juju.

Instantly my heart slowed, and I felt like I could breathe again.

My nieces and nephews were all in the living room, oohing and aahing over the gifts Mama let them open early, but my sisters and some of my brothers-in-law peeked around the doorway, watching Brand. He didn’t seem to know or care that he had an audience.

“I’m sorry , Roxanne,” he said. “You were right back on that airplane. You’ve been right all along.

I didn’t believe it then, but I do now. I’m sorry I let you down, and I’m sorry I betrayed the trust you put in me.

I told my family everything. Dixon’s gone again, but that’s not why I finally told them.

I’m in therapy, and I’ve been goin’ to a Nar-Anon family group. I started journaling and?—”

Despite my resolve not to give in too quickly, my hands lifted to his hair, and I smoothed soft strands away from his face, realizing just how much I’d missed his touch on my body, the feel of my skin on his, and the possessive love he couldn’t help but show me. “I know. Abey told me.”

He nodded. “Can you forgive me? Please say yes,” he whispered, and he laid his cheek against my stomach and wrapped his hands tightly around my back. “I don’t know what this is, this thing inside me that makes me crave you the way I do.

“Maybe it’s ’cause you’re the only person on the planet who knows me like this. I’ve never let anyone in the way you’re inside me, Roxanne. I don’t know where you came from, but now I can’t picture my life without you in it.

“I love you,” he declared loudly.

My sister, Molly, swooned with the back of her hand pressed to her forehead, three of my sisters had their hands pressed to their chests and hearts in their eyes, and my youngest sister, Cecily, stood to the side, rocking little Jessica in her arms. My brothers-in-law all looked miffed, like Brand was winning some game I didn’t know they’d been playing.

My mama had tears in her eyes, and my daddy smiled from ear to ear beside her. Merv was there, too, watching, and she smiled and nodded when we made eye contact.

He couldn’t know that I’d already forgiven him before he’d even shown up at my parents’ place, but he hadn’t given me the chance yet to tell him.

My family made me see that I had been a little unreasonable about Dixon. “If it was one of us,” Maureen had said, “and you’d been keepin’ our secret, would it be so easy to let it go?”

And she was right.

“You can submit to me,” Brand said, “or I can submit to you. It doesn’t really matter to me, beauty, as long as you’re with me.”

I cleared my throat, my face heating with embarrassment. “Um, Brand, that might be a conversation for another time. We kind of have an audience right now.”

“I don’t care,” he vowed. “Let them see and hear how much I love you. I can’t live without you. I will kneel here at your altar till the end of time if that’s what it takes. Say you’ll forgive me.”

“Baby, seriously, this really isn’t the right time.”

“Yes, it is. Don’t you remember what you said to me?”

“No. When? What did I say?”

“When Merv was in the hospital, and I came to your house and you held me and loved me all night long?—”

Maureen let out some kind of cry-squeak, and she slapped her hand over her mouth, tears collecting at the corners of her eyes.

Cecily elbowed Maureen in the ribs, rocking side to side to keep the baby asleep. “Shhh. I can’t hear over all your blubberin’.”

Brand paid no attention to them. “You said you wanted the man who’d win your heart to be head over heels in love with you, and he’d propose in front of your whole family, and then you’d ride off into the sunset with him.

“Well, the sun has already set, and I don’t have a valiant steed, but I love you more than my own life, and I’ve got two draft horses and a Christmas carriage outside waitin’ for us, and?—”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a box.

My mama gasped loudly, and Daddy wrapped his arm around her shoulder. Everyone else stood speechless, watching my dreams come true in real time, and the kids all began to filter in from the living room, poking their heads around the adults wherever they could to get a good view.

But my eyes stayed fixed on Brand. No one else existed anymore.

He reached for his hat, and I watched silently as he placed it on his head. His hair had grown longer since we’d been apart, and the thick ends showed beneath.

He was exactly the man I had been in search of my whole life, but it wasn’t the hat or his money or a ring; it was the love in his eyes.

“I planned to do this on the sleigh under a warm blanket and the falling snow, but right now feels perfect.”

Suddenly, the front door opened and shut loudly, a deep, brusque voice interrupted the most important moment of my life, and then it really was perfect.

My uncle Al’s head popped around the corner, his gray hair cropped short as usual and a sixer of Coors dangled from his fingers. “What’s goin’ on here?”

Daddy whispered, “Brand’s about to propose to Riri. Be quiet.”

“Who?”

Exasperated, Drew pointed to Brand on his knees on the kitchen floor in front of me. “ That guy.” He rolled his eyes at Uncle Al. “Now shhh. They’re just gettin’ to the good stuff.”

Uncle Al smirked at me and pretended to zip and lock his lips.

I looked at Brand and saw utter devotion on his face.

“Roxanne Rhiannon Fitts. Roxi. Riri.” He inhaled deeply and smiled.

“I love you. You are the kindest, most open and honest person I’ve ever known.

Your deep sense of loyalty and the way you love disarm me.

I want you. And I need you. You will never again have to question or doubt me. To this I swear.”

Somebody could have dropped a grain of sand on the floor and we all would’ve heard it.

Mama and Merv clutched each other’s hands and held their breath, and my daddy beamed with pride.

Brand lifted one leg and planted his boot on the kitchen floor to steady himself as he pulled a massive diamond ring from the little black box. He stuffed the box back in his jacket, took my left hand in his, and isolated my ring finger.

“Will you marry me, Roxanne? Will you love me forever as I do you?”

Pins and needles rushed through me from head to toe. My breath hitched in my lungs. And was I bawling? Yep. Completely blubbering now. I held my breath to stop the sobs, and when they died down to hiccups, he pushed the ring to the root of my finger.

Even the house seemed to be holding its breath.

I couldn’t look away from Brand’s eyes, not even to admire the ring. So many things flashed across his face: hope, joy, excitement, pain, regret, submission and dominance at the same time. But all of it boiled down to one thing.

Love.

“Yes,” I breathed. “Yes, I will marry you, and yes, I will love you…

“Forever.”