Page 205 of Sinful Like Us

Because the dog tags were her Christmas gift.

She notices me staring at them and her fingers clasp the metal. She cried when I first put them around her neck, knowing what they mean to me.

Knowing whatshemeans to me.

“Have you thought more about what kind of car you’d like?” Jane wonders, sitting up straighter on me. My shoulders press into the headboard, and I warm her thighs with my palms. She knows I’m practical, and she wanted to gift me a practical thing for Christmas.

A car.

Too fucking much.But then, I thought about it, and she could’ve easily said the dog tags weretoo much.I need to let her give me more, and I could use a car.

“Yeah.” I nod once. “Surprise me.”

Her eyes brighten. “That, I can do.”

My lip curves upward.

And Jane struggles not to grin. “We’re engaged.” Her cheeks are beet-red.

“We’re engaged.”

Wouldn’t dream of anything else than to be next to Jane forever.

Every now and then, the enormity of what this means slams at me.

The poor Italian-American boy from South Philly is marrying an American princess. I’m marrying into the Cobalt Empire. She’s marrying into my rowdy, obnoxious, and loving Italian family.

When I called them, they screamed so fucking loud I thought it’d burst the speaker. My mom and her wife put as many uncles and aunts on the line as they could.

Happy. Thrilled.

Crying.

“When’s the engagement party?!”they asked.

“Youse have a wedding date yet?! We gotta mark this down.”Doesn’t matter who the person is, if they’re family they assume they’re invited.

“What are you thinking?” Jane wonders, her eyes twinkling.

“That it’ll have to be a big wedding.” I watch her unconsciously scoot closer to my dick. My blood heats. “I have to invite everyone I know, unless I want to create about a hundred different lifelong grudges.”

“No grudges will be formed,” Jane says confidently, still smiling. It’s fucking contagious. “Our wedding will be giant and wonderful. We’ll play Italian music, most surely.”

That, right there, does a number on me. “Yeah?” Emotion fists my ribcage. My family means everything to me like hers does, and she remembers.Always remembers.

“Your grandma told me it’s the best part of Italian weddings. That and the food.” She was on the phone with my grandma and mom for an hour after the proposal.

We would’ve told them in person, but the news was going to leak fast. Jane’s blue-blooded grandmother overheard Rose talking, and no one trusted that Grandmother Calloway wouldn’t spill the engagement to the press.

She did.

Media have run a variety of articles. Most fixate on the timeline of the engagement.

Too fast, they say.

Doesn’t bother me. I couldn’t be more certain of where I’m headed. Life is short—I’ve known that since I lost my older brother. And while I’m on this earth, I want to be happy.

But to the world, Jane isn’t known as a spontaneous, wild Meadows girl. She’s seen as a logical, rational Cobalt—and in less than five months, she’s engaged to a bodyguard.