Page 90 of Mason

“You know I do.”

She nodded. “I do.”

“Then why ask me that?”

“Because I need to ask you something.”

“Ask away, baby.”

She grinned and pulled away from him. She noticed his family had come out of the trees the same time he did. She’d had a difficult conversation with his father last week, but she planned to remedy the situation today.

She dug around in her pocket and pulled out the little black box and dropped to one knee.

“What the fuck…”

She opened it and held it up for him to see. A single silver band lay nestled in the box. “Mason Kincaid, I love you, and I want to know if you’ll marry me.”

His mouth fell open.

People around them were hushed. Most everyone knew she was going to do this, and that made her even more nervous.

“Josephine.” His black eyes were wide. “Ain’t I supposed to be the one asking you that?”

“Well, you know, since you never officially asked me, I got tired of waiting for you to do it and decided to do it myself.”

His shocked expression melted away, and he laughed. “God, I love you.”

“Well, don’t keep the girl waiting!” Keith yelled. “You gonna make an honest woman of my sister or not?”

Mason reached down and hauled her up. “Yes, Josephine Marie Maxwell, I will marry you, and I will love you every single day like it’s the first day. That, I promise.”

There were catcalls and hoots and hollering all around them, but Jo tuned all that out and focused instead on the intense joy shining out of Mason’s eyes.

He plucked the silver band out of the box for her and she slid it on his finger. “Forever.”

“Forever, baby.”

After that, Keith declared it an engagement party, and the music was turned up, and their families rushed them, but neither of them paid too much attention. His family congratulated them, and even Mason’s father slapped him on the back and called him a putz for forgetting to officially ask his woman to marry him.

Mason grinned and took all the ribbing from his brothers for his girl having to pop the question, but none of that mattered.

It wasn’t the end of their love story, only the beginning, and they’d spend every day like it was their first.

A promise they both could keep.