Page 275 of One More Kiss

Chapter3

AXEL

“Areyou ever gonna put that thing down?”

Trace paired his words with the condescending eyebrow arch he knew irked me. I squeezed the ring box harder into my palm and sent him the deadliest glare I could muster.

“Are you ever gonna stop being annoying?”

“Are you two ever gonna stop being ridiculous?” Damian intoned from the kitchen, which was barely a separate area in our too-tight-to-breathe Manhattan closet we called a home. Even between three of us, rent was still so expensive that selling an organ wasn’t entirely off the table.

“Are you two ever gonna stop asking questions?” I shot back. Silence stretched through the apartment while we all smirked at one another in turn.

“I bet you’ll sleep with it under your pillow tonight,” Trace finally said.

“Fuck you,” I offered, pointing in his direction where he lay on the loveseat, an open textbook on his legs. “I will.”

“We should call him the Ring Bearer,” Damian muttered as he made a lazy path toward the recliner in our living room. Again, not so much a room as a general area in which all activities occurred. This place was a step up from our apartment in during our undergrad years at Columbia, though. Back then, we had a bona fide studio apartment, with imaginary walls and a sheet for a bathroom door. Now, we had a two bedroom and took turns sharing the second bedroom every few months. Luxury, only sharing a bedroom with your brothers for half the year.

“Funny,” I retorted. “Though I plan to be the groom. Maybe one of you could be the ring bearer?”

My brothers had been giving me shit for approximately a year about this ring purchase. They knew how much it meant to me—but of course no opportunity for ribbing could be ignored between brothers.

“I vote Damian, with his insatiable appetite for human interaction,” Trace cracked as Damian settled into the worn brown recliner facing the kitchen. Damian lifted the corner of his lip, his round, wire-rimmed glasses making him look like an early Bill Gates-style nineties computer geek. But with much better hair.

“I’d rather be coding, thanks.” When both Trace’s and my gazes fell on Damian, he added, “But obviously I’d take a break to go to the wedding.”

“You better,” I warned him. “But as soon as you start to have a good time, you need to leave. Because no recluse nerd brother of mine can be caught having a good time.”

Damian tried to send me a withering look, but a smile ghosted his lips, breaking the façade.

“Depends on where you have it,” Damian said, raking a hand through his honey brown tresses. “If you’re gunning for a church wedding, I think we can count on nobody having a good time.”

Trace kicked Damian in the knee, which elicited a scowl.

“I think the right answer is, ‘Brother, I’ll have a good time at your wedding no matter where it is,’” Trace corrected.

“I’d fucking hope so,” I said, peeking into the box one last time. A constellation of incredibly expensive diamonds winked up at me, sending another jolt of excitement through me. I still didn’t have a plan, much less a timeline. Hell, I didn’t know if we’d end up having a church wedding. I just knew I was going to ask Cora to marry me the next time I saw her, which probably wouldn’t be for a few months.

I had time to plan. And because of that, the proposal would be perfect. I’d settle for nothing less.

My phone buzzed in the deep pocket of my black sweatpants. I knew it was Cora before I even looked at it. My body had a way of alerting me when she called or texted. It was a little weird, but I was never wrong.

“’Sup, cowgirl?” I said into the phone, still looking at the ring. Cowgirl was one of my preferred nicknames for her, born from a particularly sweet and sexy trip we’d taken to Kentucky last year. Sweet because she’d met Mama Deb and Papa Gary, and sexy because I’d fucked her senseless in the back acres of my parents’ farm under the light of a full moon. She’d been in awe of the sheer ruralness of my parent’s house—the wide swaths of hayfields, the rolling horse farms, the way tractors shared the roads with cars. I’d called her cowgirl once while she giggled her way through the chicken coop, and it stuck.

“Oh, that’s Cora,” Trace said in the same way he always did: a combination groan and announcement.

Cora laughed from the other side of the country. “Hey, babe. Is now a good time?”

“It is. But let me relocate.” I headed for my bedroom—I was the lucky one at the moment who didn’t have to share. “Fuck you guys,” I called over my shoulder before I kicked the door shut. “Now where were we?”

“I think you were about to tell me how much you missed me,” she purred into the phone.

I switched the phone to speaker and tossed it on my bed while I got to work selecting the perfect resting spot for the ring box. “It’s funny you mention that, because I was just realizing there are no words in the English language to come close to describing that.”

“Not one?”

“The ones that exist barely scratch the surface of how much I miss you,” I told her while I peered at the shelves of my bookcase. There was too much space there; she could spot it while lounging in my bed. No, this hiding place needed to be rock solid. Diamond solid.

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