Page 130 of The Deals We Make

“You are?” she asks. “Can I be a bridesmaid? I was a good bridesmaid for Uncle Colton,” she says. “Pleeaasseeee.”

Bates tugs her between him and Vi. “You don’t ask. You wait to be chosen.”

“You can be one for me and Auntie Briar when we get married next year,” Saint says.

“Can I wear purple?”

Briar laughs. “No. The color scheme is a soft pale blue. But if you agree to wear that color, you can be one.”

Avery grimaces, as if someone just put a plate of tripe in front of her. “Okay,” she says, but it’s like we had to drag the word out of her. “We can talk about it later.”

Vi rolls her eyes. “Wonder where she got that sentence from.”

Bates kisses her temple. “I don’t say it that often.”

“She’s here,” Halo says, glancing out of the window.

“Fuck,” I mutter. My palms are sweating, and I move the box from one hand to the other.

I stand and King slaps my back. “Go get her, cowboy.”

“Remember to say how much you like her mind,” Niro says. “Chicks dig that.”

“Chicks?” Catalina says.

He glances at his wife. “You know what I mean.”

I hear the clack of her heels against the floor in the entrance as the room falls silent. Someone even turns the music off.

When she walks in, she looks like a million dollars. She’s wearing a black dress that is professional enough for work but hugs her curves in a way that makes me want to strip her naked.

Her coat hangs off her shoulders like a cape.

And the fucking shoes. Red, with little straps that crisscross over her ankles.

Sophia takes her coat, and I slide my hands around her waist. “You look fucking edible,” I murmur against her lips.

For a hot second, she kisses me back, then pushes gently at my chest. “What’s all this?”

I think back to New Year’s Eve. When I sat at the bar and watched everyone else wrapped up in their own happily ever after. I had no idea that I wouldn’t even make it to summer before I’d be facing my own.

And if you’d said it would be Calista, I’d have laughed long and hard.

But now I understand what they were all thinking. What they were all feeling.

So, I do what generations of men have done before me. I hold the box in my damp palm and drop to one knee in front of the woman I love with my whole fucking heart.

“Cal, sweetheart.”

She places her hands to her mouth, and her eyes shine with tears.

My chest feels like a weight has been taken off it.

She’s going to say yes.

I know it before I even ask. And it gives me the confidence to say what I want to, loud and proud, in front of my friends.

“Oh my God,” she whispers.