Page 171 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
Instead, I kissed her temple. Her cheek. The corner of her mouth. The curve of her jaw. The tops of her breasts. The soft space below her ear. Her collarbone. And against her skin, quietly, I said it back over and over with each touch of my lips, “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
She laughed, a soft, sweet sound, and her arms came up around my neck and held on. I stayed there, my face pressed to her hair, and felt the shape of my life rearrange itself into something better than it had been this morning.
“When did you know?” she asked.
I thought about it. “I think I always did,” I said finally. “Even when I couldn’t name it. It just felt like—you. Like something that had always been true, and I hadn’t found the right words yet. You?”
She smiled. “Yoga. Tonight.” Then quieter. “And I’d started to wonder, over the past week after we spent time going through my aunt’s stuff.” She traced a pattern over my chest. “You were the only person I could imagine doing that with. The hard parts. The boring parts.” Her finger stilled. “You make me feel safe enough to be exactly who I am. Every version of me—the difficult one, the uncertain one. You love the raw, unfiltered version of me that I never have to hide.”
I kissed her again and tucked her into my side as I leaned back against the headboard. I made sure she drank some water as the room settled around us. Outside, the night had fully gone quiet. In here, it was warm and dim, and she continued to draw those abstract patterns.
This is exactly what I want my life to contain, I thought to myself.
“I love ending the day like this with you,” I said.
“Me too.” She snuggled in.
A crash sounded downstairs, immediately followed by an impatient, indignant bleat.
Our small bubble of intimacy burst with those two sounds.
“What the hell?” I was out of bed before I fully processed the noise. Something about the crash tugged at the back of my mind, but the answering bleat had already pulled my full attention. “What has he donenow?”
Thirty-One
DELANEY
Marc was already halfway into his boxers and had thrown on slippers before I’d even processed the sound. It hadn’t been a normal house noise like the settling of wood or pipes. It had been a loud, distinctivecrash.The kind that yanked you from sleep and dropped adrenaline straight into your bloodstream.
“Stay here,” Marc said, running toward the door.
“Um, no,” I slid my legs into my yoga pants and top. My heart beat erratically from the suddenness of the loud sound. I grabbed my cell phone off the nightstand. “If we’re going to get murdered, I want a recording and a way to call 9-1-1.”
“That’s not how safety works.”
“It is tonight!”
He dragged a hand through his hair, frustration and concern etched into lines on his face. “Delaney, please. It might be Chaos, but it might be an intruder. I need yousafe.”
Something in his tone reached deep inside me and wrapped itself around my heart. This man wanted to put himself inharm’s way to keep me safe. “Screw that, Kingsley,” I said, stepping right up to him. “Someone ruined ourperfect‘I love you’ moment, and whether it’s the goat or a burglar, I’m prepared to give them a piece of my mind.”
His mouth twitched like he wanted to argue, but knew it was futile.
God, he really did know me.
“Stay behind me then. Please.”
I nodded like I’d obey. Which we both knew full well I wouldn’t.
The house felt different when we stepped into the hallway. Quieter. Like it was holding its breath.
Marc moved first, shoulders tight, every step careful and deliberate. I followed close behind, trying not to laugh when he motioned down the hall like we were in some low-budget spy thriller.
This was serious. Probably. Maybe. Okay, we had to at least assume it was, but also if we died because the goat had a hand in this, I was going to be pissed and haunt that thing from the other side.
We reached the top of the stairs, and I leaned just enough to see past him. The front door was closed, but the entryway looked like a small explosion had gone off. “Oh my God,” I whispered.
The hall table was flipped on its side, one leg twisted at an angle that seemed impossible. The bowl Marc kept his keys in had spilled its contents across the floor, coins glinting in the low light. The vase—the one Grace had given him—lay shattered in jagged pieces, and flowers were strewn everywhere like they’d tried and failed to escape their vessel.
