Page 115 of Stolen Kisses
“I’m awake baby. I’m sorry I scared you.”
“You can’t apologize for that.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry for everything.”
“Don’t be, you ... you did the right thing. I was an ass just hyped up on rage. Forgive me.”
“Dante please, it’s okay. I’m sorry about your vintage bike.”
“You mean my old bike?” I tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. My head hurt.
“It’s vintage.”
“Told you, that you’d be surprised by what it could do. My other bikes couldn’t have done that.” My head was aching like a bitch.
“Baby, let me get the doctor.”
I grabbed her hand. “No, wait. I don’t want sleep to come for me again.” I didn’t feel like it was, but just in case there was something I wanted to do. Something that came to me just before I jumped my bike. It was a vision of her that I had realized I wanted. I knew that leap would take me to my death and it was the last thing on my mind. “I don’t want to fall asleep again and not do this.”
“What, Dante?”
“It’s funny when I imagined doing this I never thought I’d be in a hospital bed looking like shit.”
“You could never look like that.” She smiled.
“I think I do. Please just imagine we’re somewhere you’ve always wanted to be, and I look a hell of a lot better than I do now.”
“You couldn’t look better than you do, Dante. Right now you look like the man who saved me from death and the horrible life I had. You look like Dante, the man I knew I always should have been with, but was too stupid to realize I always loved you. That night you first asked me out I wanted to say yes, I was going to say yes, because I always felt the same way you did. I considered myself this person who was never a coward, but I was with you back then. I really was when it came to you. It wasn’t that anyone was better. I was just scared. I was scared. Maybe life and all of my bad choices had to happen to me. So, I could open my eyes to see what was in front of me the whole time. Please don’t ask me to imagine anything other than what I see in front of me. I don’t want to.”
She caught and held my attention in such a way that it wiped my brain clean of everything.
I squeezed her hand.
“My girl and my child. My girl. Maria you were always the one for me. Marry me?”
She gasped and her hands flew up to her mouth.
“What?” Now she started crying.
“Marry me doll, just say yes.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “Yes a million times, for everything.”
That was the very best thing I could have heard.
Chapter 33
Maria
6months later …
One more secret …
This one was worth it though.
I couldn’t believe I’d managed to keep it from him for the last two days. All of two days.
We burst through the bedroom door. Me with my legs wrapped around Dante’s waist. Him pulling my dress over my head.
We’d landed at O’Hare International an hour ago from a beautiful three week honeymoon in the Bahamas. We could barely keep our hands off each other in the limo.
