Page 141 of Finally Mine
“Aldo, I screwed up. I let fear get in the way of what I was feeling. I let it make me doubt myself.”
“And you’re not afraid now?” he asked softly.
“I’m freaking terrified,” she corrected him. “I’m scared you won’t be able to forgive me. I’m scared that I wrecked the best thing that happened to me because I thought it was too good to be true. That someone like me didn’t deserve to be loved by someone like you. I’m scared that I’m not going to be able to fix it.”
“Gloria, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
She laughed, hot tears bubbling up.
“I thought I was too damaged to know what real love was. But I was wrong. I know what it is because of my scars, because of my past. I know what love is. I know that I love you and that I’ll spend the rest of my life loving you if you let me.” Her voice trembled. “Hell, I’ll spend the rest of my life loving you even if you don’t let me.”
“You and your baggage,” he confirmed.
She nodded. “Unfortunately, it comes with me. But maybe between the two of us we can whittle it down to a carry-on.”
He looked at her, then looked at the ground.
“Do you still love me?” she asked in a tiny voice.
“Of course I do, Gloria. But, Jesus, woman. You walked out on me.”
“I didn’t know how to be happy when she was sad,” Gloria blurted out.
“Harper?” he asked, looking at her again.
Gloria nodded. “She was so hurt, Aldo. And all I could think of is that’s how it was going to end up for us.”
“We aren’t them,” Aldo said softly.
We. We. We.He said we. He bought Mrs. Diller’s house to get the woman out of Benevolence, away from her. They could make this work. He just needed to believe in her.
“No, we’re not. We make our own mistakes—mostly me and mine—and have our own baggage, and Aldo, I’m probably going to screw up again. I’m really new at this healthy relationship thing. So I’m not always going to do or say the right thing, but I want to try. I want to try so hard with you. Please, at least think about it?”
He nodded slowly and then knelt down next to the tree.
Gloria hung her head and turned back to her suitcase. She’d said her piece. He’d listened. She shouldn’t have expected him to jump at the chance to bring her crazy back into his life. Now she was going to have to do the walk of shame back down the hill of the tree farm with a fucking piece of luggage. Thank God she hadn’t actually packed anything in it.
“Gloria.”
She turned back to him, swiping a knuckle under her nose, and then froze.
Aldo Moretta was down on one knee holding what looked to her teary eyes like either a diamond ring or a piece of star that had fallen from the sky.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m far from perfect, too. And I never stopped loving you. Would you and your baggage do me and mine the great honor of marrying me?”
“Wha?” She couldn’t even get the whole word out. She was hallucinating, wasn’t she? Mrs. Diller had hit her in the head with a frying pan to show her how it felt, and she was imagining this entire scenario. That explanation seemed more plausible than Aldo Moretta proposing marriage after she’d so carelessly cut out his heart and stomped on it.
He flashed her that devilish grin that sparked a thousand memories spanning more than a decade. “Gloria Parker, will you marry me and move in with me and have a family with me? Will you forgive me when I’m an ass and love me like I love you until the day I die? Will you bake pies and smell like flowers and paint my life with all the color you bring?”
“I think I’m having some kind of hallucination,” she whispered. She reached out, pinched his arm. He was real. So very real. And he was hers. All she had to do was say…
“Yes!”
She launched herself at him, tripping and falling into his waiting arms. They landed on the fallen tree. Then she was kissing him with the urgency of a lifetime.
“Put the ring on before I lose it,” he demanded, breaking the kiss long enough to shove the stunning solitaire onto her finger.
“Why are you carrying an engagement ring with you?” she asked, kissing him again.
