Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) (30 page)

The things he’d lost, he’d simply have to learn again. It would take time, but Connor finally felt the kind of hope that was confidence. His old man was a fighter. He’d come back.

Pilar smiled and patted his belly. “Cool. Let me get yours, too.” Before he could stop her, she’d turned and left the room. Connor picked up the box he’d tucked at the back of the counter and went to sit at the table and wait.

She came back with a small box, wrapped in pretty paper. It was a little bigger than the one he had for her. When she sat, he pushed his unwrapped box toward her and said, “I want to go first.”

“Should we flip for it?” She laughed, her gold eyes alight with humor and happiness.

“Just open the damn box, Cordero.”

She did, and then she set it down on the counter and let her hands drop away. “God. Connor. Is this…”

He pulled the box toward him and took the gold ring out of it. “You don’t wear a lot of jewelry, so I didn’t think you’d like a big, flashy thing. If I’m wrong about that, we can take this back. This is a claddagh ring. It’s a Celtic thing. The hands are friendship, the heart is love, and the crown is loyalty. My mom’s is kind of like this.”

“But different.”

“Yeah. Hers is a traditional claddagh. And she likes bling, so the heart is a diamond. The chick at the store said this is a claddagh infinity ring. It’s—I guess it’s subtler. If you don’t like it…”

“I love it. Are you proposing to me?”

“If you want that, then yeah. I don’t need the ceremony. You know how I feel—I just want my life to be with you, and that’s what the ring says to me. And I want to put ink on you that says it to everybody else. But if you want to be married, then we’ll do that, too.”

“Nana would want it. It would make her happy. A Catholic wedding. She’d feel that like something she did right.”

Setting aside his discomfort with the idea of a big wedding like that, Connor smiled. He’d marry her wherever the hell she wanted, and he knew that giving her nana some peace was important to her. “Then we’ll get married.” He picked up her hand. Before he slid the ring on her finger, he said, “It’s engraved on the inside. It says
anam cara
. It’s Gaelic for ‘soulmate.’ Because you are that. Something was missing inside me until I fell in love with you.”

Looking at the ring on her finger, she laughed, and Connor wasn’t sure if his feelings should be hurt by that.

“What’s funny?”

She pushed toward him the box she’d wrapped. “Great minds.”

“What?” He tore the paper off the box and removed the lid. On a velvet bed lay two gold chains, one a little heavier than the other. From them dangled what appeared to be a broken gold pendant, one half on each chain. Engraved across the fragments, as if they were one whole, was a Maltese cross and the word ‘FIREFIGHTER.’

“It’s a mizpah. Each one is a half of the whole.” She reached into the box and turned the pendants over, fitting them together. On the back was inscribed
May the Lord keep watch between us whenever we are apart. Genesis 31:49
. “We each wear one half. Because we’re only whole together.” She picked up the lighter chain and fastened it around her own neck, and the pendant lay at the base of her throat, with her crucifix, which had been her mother’s.

Connor did the same with the heavier chain, and his half of the pendant lay with his crucifix, which his father had given him.

At first, they sat quietly. For Connor’s part, he was too overcome with emotion to speak. He just wanted to sit for a minute and marvel.

Then Pilar laughed. “I feel like we should do something to mark the occasion.”

Unbidden, the memory of the night they’d met rose up in his mind, and he grinned. “You want to go back and fuck?”

Her eyes lit up at that, but she asked, “What about your rolls?”

He shrugged. “I’ll turn the oven off. I hear those don’t count as real cooking, anyway.”

“They really don’t.” She stood up. “C’mon, big guy. Tie me down and make me yours forever.”

Connor stood. When she reached up as if to put her arms around his neck, he went in low. He picked her up and threw her over his shoulders.

Fireman style.

THE END

COMING SOON

Dream & Dare

A Night Horde Side Trip

Bibi and Hoosier have been together a long time. Their road has not always been smooth, but their love has always run deep and true.

This is the story of that long road and that abiding love.