"No, I heard you." My heart had picked up its pace.
His grip on me loosened. "Well, okay, then."
"What? I didn"t say anything."
He rolled away from me. "Exactly."
"Griffin." I pressed my body against his back, flattening my bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s against him. "Yes."
He turned, and I had to extricate myself from him again. "Yes?"
I nodded. It wasn"t too soon, and we weren"t too young. I was a college graduate. Griffin and I knew each other very well. And I was in love with him. I wanted to be married to him. "Yes."
"Good," he said.
"That"s it? Good?" I poked him under his ribs. "You suck at this, you know?"
"I suck at it?"
"Yes, you do. You"re supposed to get down on one knee. You"re supposed to have a ring and stuff. And you"re supposed to actually ask, not just say what we should do."
"Oh," he said, grinning. "So if I"d done it that way, then you wouldn"t have responded with, "What?""
I shrugged. "Well, you"ll never know now, will you? That was the moment you proposed to me, and we"ll never get another chance."
He rolled on top of me, grasping my wrists and holding them over my head. "I guess I ruined everything, then, didn"t I?"
"Pretty much," I said.
He brought his lips close to mine, almost touching mine.
When I tried to kiss him, he yanked his head back. "Nope."
"You"re awful," I said.
"Will you marry me?" he said.
"I don"t even know anymore."
He kissed my chin. "Will you marry me?"
"Maybe," I said.
He trailed kisses up the line of my jaw, settling on the spot just below my ear. The spot that made me shiver. He kissed me there. "Will you marry me?"
I groaned.
"What was that?"
"Griffin," I sighed.
"You"re not answering the question."
"And you"re not on one knee either."
He raised his head to face me. "And I don"t have a ring."
"You don"t."
"I"ll fix it," he said, kissing me. "Later." His hand snaked down my torso to find my breast.
I gasped.
"Little busy right now."
"It"s not very traditional," said Griffin.
"We"re not traditional," I said, admiring my hand. The ring was settled on my finger there, a large, tear-drop-shaped stone. But it wasn"t a diamond. It was deep red-the color of pa.s.sion, the color of blood. And it was a better representation of the way I felt about Griffin that any delicate colorless stone would ever be. This stone was blocky, rough, big, and bold. That was my love for him. "It"s the one I wanted."
"You should take it off," he said. We were sitting outside at a cafe. The waitress had taken our breakfast orders a few minutes before.
I shot him a reproachful look. "Take it off? You just gave it to me. You"re taking it back?"
"Give me the ring, doll."
"Why?"
"Just do it."
I yanked it off my finger and slapped it into his palm. "You"re very mean, Griffin Fawkes, and I hope you realize this."
He closed his hand around the ring, grinning. "See, now just last night you were telling me how perfect I was. What happened, huh?"
"What happened is that you bought me a really beautiful ring and then you took it away from me."
He got out of his chair.
And then he was kneeling next to me.
Suddenly, I felt embarra.s.sed. "Oh," I said in a tiny voice.
"Leigh Thorn," he said, looking up at me.
"You don"t have to," I whispered. "I was joking."
He held up the ring. "Will you marry me?"
I closed my eyes. "Yes."
"Give me your hand." His voice was gentle.
I put my hand in his. He slid the ring back on my finger. We both looked down at the scarlet stone.
"Yes," I said again.
And then I kissed him.
"So, do you think I should call my mom?" Griffin asked me. He was sitting at the turquoise-colored desk in our hotel room.
I was lying on my stomach on one of the beds, my ankles crossed in the air behind me. "Well, it would be cool if there was someone we could tell. And I don"t have any family." My mother had disappeared when I was too young to remember her. My father had his memory wiped. I was alone.
"Yeah," he said.
"But if you think it would put her in danger, then maybe we should wait?"
He sighed. "That"s the thing. I hate that our lives are being disrupted because Marcel is an a.s.shole. Why do we have to drop everything? Why do we have to run?"
"Because he takes pleasure in torturing you?"
Griffin glowered at the desk. "I need to stop him."
"We don"t know where he is," I said.
"No," he said. "We don"t."
"I don"t know if I want you going after him anyway. I would worry."
"You want us to spend the rest of our lives on the run?"
I bit my lip. "No."
"Look," he said, "we have to take our lives back. And the first step is acting like we"re not frightened of him. And we do that by living the way we would if he weren"t doing this to us."
"But we aren"t living that way," I said, a little confused.
"Not yet," he said. "But we will be. The first thing I"m going to do is call my mother and tell her that we"re engaged." He picked up his phone deliberately, as if challenging me to stop him.
"Well, if you think it"s okay," I said.
He dialed. "I"m going to put it on speaker phone."
I smiled. "Okay." I did feel excited. I liked Griffin"s family. I hadn"t gotten the chance to know them real well, but from what I knew of them, they were great.
Griffin set the phone on the table. The speaker was on, and I could hear it ringing.
It rang five or six times before someone answered.
"h.e.l.lo?" Griffin"s mother had an even thicker New Jersey accent than Griffin did. Even though she"d relocated to Texas, she sounded just as east coast as ever.
"Ma?"
"Griffin, is that you? Oh, thank G.o.d. I"ve been trying to get you on the phone since last night." There was a tremulous quality to her voice.
He heard it, and his smile melted away. "Something wrong?"
"Oh, Griffin, he"s got your sister."
He stiffened. "Who does?"
I sat up on the bed.
"I don"t know his name. All I know is that he called me, and he told me that he had my Christa, and that if I didn"t get in touch with you, he"d kill her."
Griffin dragged his hand over his face. "No."
"He says you gotta come home, baby," she said. She sounded close to tears. "And I want you here. I"ve never been so scared in my whole life. He said if I called the police, he"d kill her. Do you think I should?"
"No," he said. "No, you did good, Ma. Don"t do anything else. I"m in Austin. I"ll be there as quick as I can."
"Be careful, Griffin," she said. "Please be careful."
"I"m coming," he said. He hung up the phone. He turned to look at me, his face twisted and angry. "f.u.c.k."
"Griffin." I got to my feet and went to him.
But he brushed me away, balling his hands into fists.
"Griffin, please don"t hit anything in the hotel."
He rounded on me. "G.o.ddammit, doll."
I put my hand on his cheek. "We"ve got to go. We"ll go."
"Do you think he followed us? Do you think it"s because I went by their house?"
"There"s no way to know that," I said. But I had told him that was a possibility, hadn"t I?
"I should have listened to you."
"It doesn"t matter. We can"t change it now."
"You"re right, you"re right." He stalked across the room, shoved his clothes into his pack and headed for the door. I struggled to gather my stuff and keep up with him.