Page 113 of The Right Garza

“I’ve never been sure about anything in my life,” he tells me. “My birth mother, my college major, my career choice, my style… I’ve winged everything in my life; some things stuck, and some didn’t. But there’s one thing I’ve always been unequivocally, unquestionably, unreservedly, one-hundred-percent certain about, and it’s what you are to me. Never wavered, never fucking waned. I knew, since you first walked through our doors with your pig tails and talk-back attitude and asked me what the hell I was staring at, that you’d be mine.”

Oh, my heart.

This…this is real. I’m really here, in this moment, experiencing this. Hearing these words.Feelingall of these indescribable, earth-shifting emotions.

All these years I’ve been walking around with his freakingproposalon my chest. I never would’ve thought to try to pry it open. Though maybe that was the idea. For me to never find it…until he was ready for me to.

He takes the necklace and brushes his thumb over the words. “Dad helped me with this. I asked him if he believed in soulmates, ‘cause I believed with my whole heart that you were mine, even though you were with someone else. Then he told me the truth about him and Mom. That he’d always known she was the one, but she chose his brother…”

“Stefano told me about that.”

Trent nods. “He said that if you were mine, then you would be. No matter what.”

He closes all the compartments of the locket, so it’s back to how it was. “I don’t want an answer from you now.” As he leans in with the necklace, I hold my hair up out of the way so he can latch it around my neck again. “Just wanted you to know where I stand with you.”

I don’t even know what to say. To think I’ve spent my whole life not knowing that there’s someone in this world who loves me this much, this wide, this deep…

This man’s love is cosmic. Earth-shattering. With a depth that I will never, ever be able to match. Ever.

I do not deserve you.

“So, you see,”— he presses a kiss to one corner of my mouth—”it’s nothing for me to give you what I did. Because Ilivefor you, Hellcat.” Another kiss. “Everything I’ve ever worked for was with a plan of you and me in mind. Everything I have is yours.All I am is you. I love you. Till death, Lexi. Till death.”

I’m a balloon of emotions, threatening to burst at the tiniest prick. “I don’t deserve you.”

“No, you don’t.” He kisses my nose, my cheeks, my eyelids…cherishing me. “You deserve the world. And then some.”

I grab his face between my palms, but before I can kiss him, he beats me to it. His kiss is color and life. Large and wondrous. I come alive with every lick of his tongue.

In a matter of months, this man has become the beat of my heart. The blood in my veins. Thrumming to life a part of me that I never knew existed.

I will never deserve him.

But I will die trying to.

Chapter THIRTY-FIVE

“I’ll always come back to you.”

Lexi

Seven months later...

“Okay, I’m going forgood this time,” I say as I skip down the front steps of the B&B. “Be back in about an hour or so.”

It is quiet and peaceful, yet alive.

The weather is perfect.Lifeis perfect.

While it took roughly three months of strategic marketing forBarefoot Runawayto get a pulse, we are now alive and kicking. And dare I saybooming?Well, as “booming” as a B&B can be.

I stop abruptly, rethinking my leave. “Are yousureyou can handle the Tony Manson check-in?”

Monica rolls her eyes at me. “Things won’t fall apart if you aren’t here, Lexi. You have cultivated a very efficient and capable staff.Trustus. Besides, I think everyone in there is too afraid of you to mess up.”

Of course she’s capable and of course I trust her—she wouldn’t be assistant general manager if I didn’t. However, I’ve never, ever left the premises when there’s supposed to be a celebrity check-in.

With the path I’m trying to direct the business on right now, it is crucial that we’re nothing short of exceptional. And when I am around the staff doesn’t mess around.