Page 177 of Break the Ice
“Not a fucking chance.” Chase points a finger at me. “You were front and center for Chaz. YouinventedJarlie. You don’t get to tap out now.”
“Yeah,” Jake agrees. “Your choices are participate or perish.”
Lulu’s eyes sparkle. “What about… Lulo?”
“Sounds like a tropical yogurt.”
“Pogan?” Zoe offers.
“Sounds like a diet.”
Jake leans forward, grinning. “Luggy.”
“No.”
“I think we go classic—Lulogan,” Charlie offers. “It’s cute.”
“Basic,” Chase says. “Loglu. Way punchier.”
Tamara snorts. “Sounds like a prescription.”
“Could be,” Jake says. “For rage. Taken twice daily by Eli Parnell.”
Eli glares. “Kill me.”
“LoLu?” Zoe tries.
“Sounds like a YouTube kids channel,” Lulu says, wrinkling her nose.
“I’ve got it!” Chase practically howls. “PooLu.”
Jake points at him, triumphant. “That’s the one!”
“No,” I say flatly.
“Too late,” Zoe sings. “It’s perfect.”
“It’s a bodily function.”
“It’slove,” Lulu counters, and presses a kiss to my jaw right in front of her brother.
Eli groans. “I’m gonna be sick.”
“You’re just mad your name is so much worse than theirs,” says Chase.
“E.T.,” Jake chimes in.
“Stop reminding me,” Eli hisses.
Lulu curls into my side and sighs like she’s never been happier.
The table breaks into another round of chaotic argument about whether “Chaz” should still be trending, and across the room, Gary is now pouring Betty a gin with the kind of reverence usually reserved for presidential visits.
And in the middle of it all, I sit there with the girl in my lap who said yes twice. Once with a plastic pink ring, then with a diamond.
She catches me looking, leans in, and kisses me. Soft and certain and completely unbothered by the room around us. No more secrets or sneaking or hiding. No tension in my spine wondering who might see.
I rest my forehead against hers for half a second, breathing her in.
She pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, and I don’t even try to play it cool. I just hold her there, my thumb brushing her hip. Heart steady in my chest for the first time in too long.
“PooLu forever,” she whispers.
I groan, but she’s grinning, and somehow that’s it. That’s the whole thing. The whole damn world could fall apart and I’d still feel like the luckiest idiot in existence.
“PooLu forever,” I murmur back.
And I don’t care who hears it.
Because fuck, it feels good to love her out loud.
