Page 66 of From the Ashes

He chuckles and lifts his shirt up while pulling down the waistband of his pants. “I was tired of doing everything I wastold,” he says. “So I did something spontaneous. Maybe a bit crazy. Is it crazy, Zahir?”

I can’t answer him for a moment, because my throat has temporarily closed up, and my eyes are burning with tears.

“You got a tattoo?” Yara asks, obviously also seeing the same clear medical grade adhesive covering the brand-new art on Colt’s hip. “Neat! What is it?”

“My signature,” I manage to croak out.

It’s where I signed him during our insanely intense and amazing art sex in my new studio a couple of weeks ago.

He looks smugly at it. “I couldn’t believe it didn’t come off when we…you know.” He waggles his eyebrows at me, and I try not to blush. Thankfully, everyone else seems to have moved farther away from the collapsed area, and don’t seem to be listening in. “And I was just, like, overcome with the knowledge that Ihadto make it permanent. So I took a bunch of photos so I could recreate it and had an appointment yesterday. Because I’m yours, Zahir. I never, ever,everwant you to doubt that again. I’ll never leave again or treat you like shit. I hope it’s okay and not weird. Maybe I should have asked your permission to use your autograph like that, but?—”

I can’t stand it any longer. I lean down and kiss his mouth hard right there on the damn backboard. “It’s beautiful,” I say wetly as I laugh against his lips. “You’re beautiful.”

“Because you make me beautiful,” he tells me.

Apparently not everyone has quite moved out of earshot. “Okay,” Portia says very seriously. “I’m calling shotgun right now. I’m going to be the flower girl at your wedding.” She indicates Yara. “This one’s clearly going to be maid of honor, and you’ve probably got a dozen groomsmen over there. So that makes me the flower girl.”

I laugh and so does Colt, who grips my hand despite the IV in his wrist. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

Shaking my head, I brush his hair back. “You’re high on pain meds.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes. “You want a more romantic proposal than this? Such a diva.”

Something strange travels down my spine. I know he doesn’t mean it…but whatever final reservations I had lingering within me that Colt wasn’t all in finally and completely dissolve.

He’s come out to his parents.

He’s possibly giving up law.

He’s staying in Redwood Bay.

He loves me. He might even want to marry me.

What is there now standing in the way of our future other than my fear? Nothing could be as terrifying as the possibility of losing him forever like I faced just now.

Foreverwithhim sounds like exactly what I want.

“Do it again properly some time, and you’ll find out if I’ll say yes,” I say, my skin burning and my head light as I feel in my bones just how much I mean that.

Colton Ross has been the love of my life since he breezed into my life at fourteen and even after we were eighteen when he slipped through my fingers like grains of sand on the beach. Now that he’s washed back up on my shore and proven to me just what kind of man he is under the façade, I’m never letting him go again. I’m never letting him hide again—neither of us will.

We wasted fifteen years apart. As of today, that period of our lives is officially over.

“I told the guys you were my boyfriend when I thought you were dead,” I confess as we lift him onto the gurney.

He laughs and reaches for my hand again. “Happy to be your alive boyfriend, Boyfriend.”

I glance around at the rest of the squad who are very obviously pretending not to be listening. “You know the entire One-Thirteen just heard that, right?” I ask him with a wince.

But he just grins harder.

“They were meant to, baby,” he says.

CHAPTER 25

Colt

SIX WEEKS LATER

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