I grab an appetizer from the table, making small talk with everyone, and accept a cocktail when it’s placed in my hand. When in Rome, right? I reach the end of the table and the laughter starts again when I see the cake. It’s the torso of a woman, with a matching bra and panty set, but it’s what’s written on the abdomen of frosting that cracks me up. “Save your bumps, check for lumps.”
“Funny, right?” Becks’s voice is in my ear as his arms slide around my waist and pull me back into him.
I close my eyes and accept his warmth and the calm that comes with his touch. “Thank you,” I whisper into the crook of his neck, my eyes squeezed close as I accept the risk he took throwing this party tonight.
“Well, Rylee helped a lot, so she deserves most of the credit, but we figured you were worth it,” he teases, pressing a kiss to my temple.
“A lot worth it!” Rylee’s voice is to my left. I turn, still in Becks’s arms, to face her and belt out a laugh to find her with a trayful of shot glasses filled to the hilt with amber liquid. “If this toast was needed at any time in our lives, it’s tonight,” she says with a gleam in her eye, referring to our salute, which has stuck with us through college parties, bad boyfriends, and all the things life has thrown at us.
I step out of Becks’s arms and help her place the tray on the table so nothing spills. When I turn to hand one to Becks, I notice that almost everyone in the room around us is double-fisting full shot glasses like the ones on the tray. I guess I was too absorbed in my boob voyage cake to notice.
Ry grabs a glass and hands me one. “You ready?”
I grin with a nod to her. “Ready as I’ll ever be.” And the look she gives me tells me that she knows I mean more than just slinging back shots.
“Okay, everyone! On the count of three. For my best friend, my sister from another mister … time to make cancer your bitch.” The crowd around us hoots and hollers, me included as we all raise our first shot glass in the air. “One, two, three …”
“One for luck and one for courage!” The entire room erupts into a synchronized toast before falling silent as they toss back the first and then the second shot. Cheers erupt, followed by people swearing as the burn hits their throats.
And hell yes, it burns … but it also feels so good right now. All of this, all of them, because it means I’m alive. The thought causes more than my throat to burn as I blink back the tears that sting my eyes now as the entirety of the moment hits me.
I fall silent as I take it all in, my eyes watching everyone I love around me, and I don’t realize I’ve zoned out until Becks removes the empty shot glasses from my hands. “Sorry,” I tell him, startled at how lost in thought I was.
And I think he can see the emotion that’s running rampant within me because he steps up and brushes a soft kiss to my lips. “I think it’s time to step into the ring, Ms. Montgomery,” he murmurs, trying to break me from my funk by turning our bodies toward the inflatable boxing ring. “You need to get a little practice in…. Hit me with your best shot.”
“You’re on, Country.”
“I’m sure I can find one of those sexy ring girl outfits somewhere you can put on.”
I punch him in the shoulder at the comment and shake my head.
“You’re gonna have to hit me harder than that. You fight like a girl.”
“Exactly. Let’s hope so.”
I hug Rylee for the bazillionth time, assure her I’ll see her in the morning … well, later today, when I wake up from surgery, and shoo her and Colton out of the door of the warehouse.
I blow a breath out to collect myself and watch as Colton opens the door of the Range Rover for her before sliding in himself. Sammy puts the car in gear, and I follow the taillights out of the parking lot, empty at this god-awful hour of three in the morning.
I’m exhausted. Emotionally fulfilled but absolutely exhausted.
And I realize maybe this is exactly what Becks wanted. For me to be so tired that I couldn’t worry about what’s going to happen three hours from now because I was so busy being inundated with love.
How did he know this is exactly what I needed when I didn’t even know it myself?
I shake my head, not sure how I deserve this man after everything I put him through, but resolved that whatever comes next, I’m not giving him up without a fight.
“You’ve got a nasty right hook, you know….” His voice startles me. I didn’t realize that Becks had walked into the office. I thought he was still gathering all of the cards and gifts that friends had brought.
He flicks the switch, bathing the office into darkness as I turn toward him. He steps into the room, a light from the warehouse at his back causing shadows to fall on his face, and I can’t help but be brought back to a few weeks ago: He looked exactly the same the night of Rylee and Colton’s wedding.
And look where that got us.
I just stare at him, so many words running through my mind but none of them is quite right to express the sheer emotion that I feel for him. I thought the cancer diagnosis was going to rock my world, and it did—but not nearly as much as the man before me has.
“You tired?” he asks when I don’t respond to his comment.
“Yeah, but I’m just taking it all in. I can’t put into words what tonight meant to me. I didn’t think I wanted anyone to know, and yet the love I felt … I’m just speechless, so thank you.”
He closes the few feet between us and reaches out to move a strand of hair off my face. “You know I’d do anything for you, right?”
The promise in his words and the look I can see in his shadowed eyes reinforces everything I feel about him. I lean forward and press my lips to his, the taste of him pushing back thoughts of where we’re headed next because right now it’s just Becks and I.
His hands slide up my torso, nerves humming to life from his touch, despite the fatigue. They move over to cup my breasts, causing bittersweet tears to sting my eyes as he leans down and brushes a reverent kiss on each of them through my shirt.
When he lifts his eyes back up to mine, I can see the emotion glistening there, can feel his love palpable and real as it reverberates in the space between us. “Sweet Haddie,” he murmurs as he leans forward to brush those devastating lips of his against mine again, “I love you.”
Every part of my being sighs at the words he doesn’t need to say because he shows me so handily those feelings in everything he does for me. “I love you too.” And when he leans back and looks in my eyes, I know he sees it reflected back at him.
He pulls me into his arms and just holds me tight. I memorize everything about him right now: the feeling of safety, the sense that everything is going to be okay. The little things I can hold on to later when I’m doubting my decisions for putting him through this. And then my mind recalls a lost promise.
“Hey, Country?”
“Mm-hmm?” he murmurs into the crown of my head.
“You said you’d do anything for me, right?”
“Yes,” he answers, drawing the word out as he tries to figure out where I’m going with this.
I look up at him, sure there’s a devilish smirk on my face. “You never fulfilled a certain three-day rule, you know.”
He raises his eyebrows at me, working his tongue in his cheek. “Which one might that be?” He feigns innocence.
“Well, you did call me, so …” I trail my finger down the bare skin at his throat, my teeth working my bottom lip and my body on high alert as it waits in anticipation for what I know he won’t deny me.
He looks over my shoulder at the wall behind me, his playful grin flashing his intent. “If you insist …” he groans at the same time he reaches out to me. Our hands and bodies collide in a frenzy of removing clothes and roaming mouths and unsated need.
“We have to be at the hospital soon,” he murmurs as he lifts me up so that my legs are around his hips and my back is against the wall.
“Time is precious, Daniels. Waste it wisely.”