Page 108 of Midnight Racers

She was more right than she thought on that point. Craig was very much dead, and his body gone forever.

“Charlotte, I told you that you were mine. How could you not understand that?”

She chewed the corner of her mouth, something she tended only to do when she was feeling vulnerable and unsure of herself. “Flynn, I don’t understand any of this anymore. This started off as a sexual arrangement and somewhere in the middle of it I—” She broke off and glanced away.

Jordan had been right when he told me I was going to have to fix this mess because Charlotte would keep running unless I did. I took the steaks out of the pan to rest and turned the sauce off.

I didn’t do relationships or sentiment, yet, I was about to either make a fool out of myself or create a new future that I had never envisaged. I’d spend the past few days taking out a threat to Ash’s company, and the entire time we were undercover, all I could think about was Charlotte. All I’d wanted to do instead of killing men who threatened our companies, was to crawl into bed beside her the same way I’d done that last time I’d been at the hospital and hold her until she fell asleep.

She watched me with huge eyes as I paced around the kitchen and eventually came to stand in front of her. I deliberately put my hands on her knees and widened her legs for me to step between to ensure she knew that she belonged to me. It was a possessive gesture that she would understand on a basic level. I grasped her chin between my fingers and lifted her head until her eyes met mine.

“I told you that you were mine,” I said. “If any other man even tried to touch you, I would cut his hand off before slitting his throat.”

She swallowed but didn’t look away.

“You want to know about my life?” I queried. “My dad walked away and discarded me as if I meant nothing. His next son was the one he always wanted, and he let the entire world know how he felt about both of us. I worked as a paid assassin for years until Jordan found me and we formed Midnight Racers.”

I took a staggered breath and closed my eyes. I would never regret being an assassin and I couldn’t change my life choices, but I wasn’t that man anymore.

Charlotte’s small hand found mine, her fingers threading through mine, giving me the strength to continue.

“I don’t trust people easily, have no problem dispatching a problem to the depths of Hell, and I really despise liars and bullies. My grandpa became my father and my grandma took over the role of my mother when Mum couldn’t cope for a few years. Mum is the only real family I have left, but I couldn’t let Lydia give that selfish asshole her kidney when his number one son was a match but didn’t tell anyone.”

She leaned her chin on my chest and stared up at me without blinking. “I love you,” she whispered.

I tucked her blonde curls behind her ear. “I know, you used to tell me every night in your sleep.”

Her eyes widened and a flush crept up her cheeks.

“The first time, I panicked, and then I used to wait until you fell asleep just to see if you would say it until it became an obsession for me.” I cupped her cheek with my spare hand since she still had my other hand gripped in hers. “It made me question everything I thought I knew about love since I’d vowed to avoid relationships, marriage, and children. You’ve constantly made me question everything I thought I knew about myself.”

She started to chew the corner of her lip again.

“I knew I loved you the day I realised I didn’t want to live in a world where you didn’t exist,” I told her. “I created my life from nothing, so know that I can survive without most things, but I can’t do this without you, Charlotte. When I saw that tiny heartbeat on the monitor, I knew I loved our baby, too.”

She continued to stare up at me, and for the first time in forever, everything made sense.

“Marry me, Charlotte, because I’m never letting you walk out of my life again.”

She looked like I had just slapped her, with her mouth open and eyes wide. “I—” Her tongue licked between her full lips. “Is this because I’m pregnant? Because we can still both be parents—”

I broke off her nonsense with my lips crashing into hers. She tended to lose focus when I kissed her. “I want you to marry me because I need you in my life to be able to breathe. I want my ring on your finger so that any asshole who even thinks about looking at you twice will know I will put a bullet in their brain if they do.”

“Isn’t that just a little possessive and slightly jealous?” Charlotte teased.

“There is no middle ground when it comes to love,” I replied. “You caused an itch to morph into a terminal disease, and the only cure is you in my life.”

“That’s either terribly romantic or really creepy.”

“Go with romantic,” I said against her lips.

She looped her arms around my neck to tug me closer to her. “Yes, I’ll marry you, but don’t think I won’t claw the eyes out of any woman who sets her sights on you.”

I couldn’t stop my grin from spreading, her lips echoing the movement of mine. “Gorging eyes out is a little bloody. Women tend to prefer poison as a mode of murder.”

Her legs wrapped around my waist. “Thanks, I’ll remember that. Now kiss me.”

Our lips collided and I surrendered to the inevitable. I hadn’t known it at the time, but Charlotte had claimed my worthless heart that night months ago when I responded to the alarm at the garage. She had jolted me back from a dull life of existence into remembering how to live.

---