Saved (Tempted #2) (11 page)

“Are you still going to spend the night?” I asked West, batting my eyelashes.

After my period talk I highly doubted it but it was worth a shot.

“I’ll bring the chocolate and the tampons,” he said, even though Ethan and Roman were laughing at him.

“Quit laughing! When I pop this baby out you better buy me tampons,” Emma said, hitting Roman with the menu.

“So whipped,” Ethan said under his breath.

“Screw you, Ethan. I’m in love. And love makes you do crazy things,” West said, kissing my cheek.

Everyone stopped talking and looked at West like he had grown two heads. They had never heard him say the L word.

As I watched my friends, wait. Scratch that. As I watched my family laugh and order their lunch, I let myself get lost in my head again.

I knew it was just a matter of time before Luca told him everything that I should have told him five years ago. And I knew there was a huge chance he would leave me as soon as he found out. I couldn’t have blamed him.

Why was it so hard to be happy?

Why couldn’t some good things last?

And why did someone asshole always want to cause trouble?

But most importantly why was it so difficult to tell the truth?

I loved my job. Baking was what I was passionate about. And everything had been going great. So, from the outside perspective it looked as if I had everything I ever wanted. Great friends, a job I loved, and the world’s most amazing boyfriend.

But I couldn’t pull myself out of the funk I was in. Putting on a smile when you were living in fear was so difficult.

It had been a long, worry filled week since Luca threatened to burst my bubble. I hadn’t seen him anywhere and that was weird. Lakeveiw was quite possibly the smallest town in the United States of America. And I’m not even kidding. So, going a day without seeing one someone was considered odd.

Maybe he was in his evil lair plotting how to tell my secret.

Snap out of it!

I had to stop thinking and constantly worrying about it. It was going to drive me insane. If he hadn’t told West yet maybe he was just bluffing.

Yeah, that’s it. He was just trying to get a rise out of me.

The sound of laughing extracted me from my thoughts. Looking up I saw Emma and Grace moseying their way inside.

Emma’s baby bump was quickly growing and it wasn’t long until she would find out the little peanuts gender. I was hoping for a little girl and so was she. Being pregnant suited her and so did being happy. She had always been beautiful but pregnancy made her prettier if that was even possible.

And Grace was literally out of her mind. She was spontaneous and she could make any situation interesting. And of course she was gorgeous. Seriously was there something in the water here. Everyone was freakishly beautiful.

“What’s so funny?” I asked them, grabbing two cupcakes from the glass case for them.

They sat at the small table closest to the counter.

“We stopped by the shop to bring the guys some food and you’ll never guess what we walked in on,” Grace said, trying to catch her breath.

“With those three fools I’d believe anything,” I told her, placing their cupcakes in front of them.

Salted caramel for Em and orange cream for Grace. I knew these girls like the back of my hand.

“They were fighting over who was the best member of One direction was,” Emma said with tears spilling down her face.

Doubling over in laughter, I had to cross my legs to keep the pee from running down my legs.

Okay, that was an overshare but it was funny.

“Wait! That’s not even the best part,” Grace said, trying her hardest to stop laughing to tell me the rest.

It literally took her 30 minutes to tell me the rest because every time she started to tell the story she started laughing.

“West said the best member was Justin Bieber!”

My cheeks hurt so badly from laughing. I didn’t have to ask if he really said that because it sounded exactly like something he would say.

“It’s a good thing he’s hot,” Emma said, taking a huge bite out of her cupcake.

True.

Pregnancy had given Emma a mean streak and it was a mile long. It also made her extremely honest. Sometimes too honest.

“Emma! Shut up and eat,” Grace told her, shaking her head.

Laughing, I walked to the back to grab them two cups of sweet tea.

Reaching Emma her glass first, I watched as she took a gulp from her cup.

“Sweet tea is the greatest invention ever,” she said, motioning for Grace to drink hers.

Grace cleared her throat and the vibe of the room went from light hearted to serious.

“Mads? Can we ask you something?” Grace asked, biting her bubblegum pink lips.

Why were they looking at me as if my dog had just died?

“Sure.”

“What’s bothering you? You can tell us anything,” Emma said, reaching for my hand.

I needed to vent but I couldn’t tell them too much. But still I had to talk to someone.

“Have you ever had something weighing so heavily on shoulders that it feels like your carrying around a ton of bricks?”

“Yeah, I have,” Emma whispered.

And I knew she had. We were different in so many ways but we were alike in that way.

We had both been through hardships.

“Anything you want to talk about?” Grace asked, rubbing my back.

“No, not just yet. But I do want your opinion on something. Both of you.”

They both nodded their heads and kept their eyes glued on me.

“If someone you loved had a secret, I’m talking a big secret that they should have told you years ago. And they finally told it to you would you leave them?”

“Is it that big of a secret?” Grace asked.

“It’s pretty big. How would you react if Roman kept something very important from you? Something that had just as much to do with you as it did him,” I asked Emma, bracing myself from her answer.

“I would be furious,” she answered truthfully.

Yeah, that’s what I thought. West would probably never forgive me. If the tables were turned I wasn’t sure I would have been able forgive him.

Hearing the door open, I looked up and saw customers walking in.

“Sorry, girls, I’ve got get back to work,” I told them, getting up from the chair.

I bagged up the order that the two men had placed and after they I left I realized I was alone again. And that wasn’t good because as soon as I was alone I got lost in my thoughts again. That meant I could go over all of the outcomes of West finding out and torture myself even more.

Yay!

I knew what her answer would be but what I didn’t know was how hard hearing someone say what I already knew was going to hurt.

He was going to be so angry and I knew he was going to pull away. 

And just when he let himself get really close. Just when he let me completely break his walls down.

I tried to muster up the courage every time I was around him but I couldn’t he was just too happy.

I was happy. We were happy and I wanted it to stay that way.

I wanted to wake up to his face every morning. I wanted to take him to bed every night. But most of all I wanted to love him forever.

And the secret I was keeping had the power to destroy all of that.

After helping the last customer of the day I locked the place up and drove to my apartment. Hearing my phone ring, I picked it up and put it on speaker.

“Hello?” I said, turning the music down.

“Hey, Angel. You off work yet?” West asked in that panty melting voice of his.

“Yep, just locked up. Where are you?”

“Laying on your couch. And I don’t think Gracie likes me being here too much. She just locked herself in her room.”

That made my heart smile and my stomach drop at the same time. I couldn’t wait to see him and kiss him. But I hated that I was still lying to him.

“She loves you babe. But you know Grace she’s a tad bit of a drama queen.”

“Yeah, I know. So, I was thinking if you’re not busy tonight that you might like to have date night?”

So. Freaking. Cute.

“Depends.”

“On what?” he asked, clearly confused.

“If you’re going to spend the night with me or if you’re just going to walk me to my door and kiss me goodnight.”

“Angel, that’s not my style. You’re going to spend the night screaming my name and begging for my body to be on top of yours.”

Now, that sounded like the perfect date night to me.

“In that case my answer is yes. Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“I hate surprises.”

“I know.”

“Hang up.”

“No, you hang up first,” West said in the highest voice he possibly could.

“Okay.”

Hitting the end button, I tossed my phone on the passenger seat.

West had this amazing sense of humor and he always seemed carefree. The only time I had ever seen him unhappy was when his parents rolled back into town and I didn’t want to be the reason he wasn’t happy.

I never wanted him to place me into the same folder as them. If anything I wanted to be his light in the dark. And I wanted for him to love his life with me the way I loved mine with him. I never wanted his first thought when someone mentioned me by name to be bad.

To sum it all up, I wanted to be his angel.

West waited for me to get dressed. He would have followed me into my room and watched me get dressed but Ethan was keeping him company.

Apparently Grace and Ethan were having a movie night.

Yeah right.

If that’s what they wanted to call it.

They seriously needed to have sex and get it over with. I had no idea why they were dancing around the fact that they both wanted each other.

It was painfully obvious.

West had only one request when I left him to get ready.

Wear something that was easy to get off.

So, following his orders I picked a slinky sweater dress and Grace’s knee high hooker boots.

Grace’s party girl alter ego would definitely have approved.

Quickly giving my hair a tousle, I put my lipstick on and made my way to the living room.

“Hooker with a heart of gold,” Ethan said, doing a cat call.

“Eat me,” I told him, flicking him off.

“That’s my job,” West said, walking over to me and squeezing my ass.

“Ewe,” Grace said from her spot on the kitchen counter.

“Okay, seriously guys. Ya’ll are nasty,” Ethan said, scrunching his nose up.

“You started it,” I fired back at him, “Babe, can we go?”

“Yeah,” he said, walking to the door and holding it open for me.

“Thank you,” I told him, giving him a chaste kiss.

We walked hand and hand down the stairs.

As we walked through the parking lot I looked up at the stars and for the first time in a while I felt at peace. I felt good.

Playing with my necklace, I made a promise to myself to enjoy my night with West.

He unlocked his car and held the passenger door open for me. Getting inside, I flashed him my black lace underwear.

My heart jumped at his wicked smile.

He wanted to do very bad things to me and I wanted him too.

He got in the car and pulled something red from his pocket.

“Before we go there’s something I need to do,” he said, unfolding the red silk.

Was that a blindfold?

Yes, it was.

I felt excitement pulsate through my body.

“I’m going to tie this around your eyes, so you can’t see where we’re going,” he said, bringing the blindfold to my face.

The cool red silk brushed across my face and it made me tingle all over. The silkiness of the fabric made goose bumps appear on my skin.

Something about not being able to see where he was taking me was strangely sexy.

“We’re almost there, Angel,” I heard West’s smoky voice say.

Damn, his voice was even sexier when you didn’t have the distraction of his chiseled body and handsome face.

He wasn’t pretty boy handsome. No, he was rugged and rough handsome. And I’d be damned if any woman wouldn’t go for that.

Hearing his door open, I started to remove the blindfold. But West placed his hand over mine to stop me.

“Oh no, you don’t,” he whispered in between the kisses he kept placing on my lips, “I’ll take it off of you when I get you inside.”

I nodded as he grabbed my hand and pulled me along with him. My mind was running wild trying to guess where he was taking me. Knowing West the way I did it could be anywhere.

Literally anywhere.

The chilly December air touched my face and it made me shiver. Normally I hated to be outside in the cold but I had a feeling that his body was going to warm me up.

And I couldn’t wait.

Hearing the squeaking of a door, I squeezed his hand. I knew where we were.

We were in the storm cellar.

Walking through the door, I smelled something delicious. I was positive Marion was in on West’s romantic plan because he couldn’t cook to save his life.

He helped me sit on a chair and pushed it in until I felt a table in front of me.

Feeling West untie the blindfold, it dropped to the floor to reveal Christmas lights draping from the ceiling and candles everywhere. Glancing down at the table, I saw a romantic candle lit dinner in front of me.

“Babe, this is amazing. I love it,” I told him, looking around the room in shock.

“Really?” he asked, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Really.”

“I wasn’t sure if you would like it. I mean I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I don’t have a romantic bone in my body.”

That wasn’t true. He thought just because he had a hard time telling me how he felt that he wasn’t romantic and that just wasn’t the case.

“You’re perfect to me,” I told him, walking over and sitting on his lap.

The best seat in the house.

“You’re so beautiful, Angel,” he said, touching my face.

I sat there and stared at him. And thought about how lucky I truly was to have West. He made me feel loved beyond measure and that wasn’t something you find every day.

That’s why I didn’t want to lose him.

“You outdid yourself tonight, babe. Is there a special occasion?” I asked, taking in every detail around the room.

It looked like something off of a romantic blockbuster. In other words it was perfect.

“Yeah, actually there is,” he said, rubbing his hands down my legs.

He looked so nervous. Wait, why did he look so nervous?

“Angel, I’ve known you were the one for me since middle school,” he said, stopping to gather his thoughts and doing his best to dodge any kind of eye contact.

My heart was beating a hundred miles a minute. Putting my hand over his heart, I felt his beating the same way.

Breath, Maddie, just breathe.

“West? What are you doing?” I asked in a shaky voice.

“I have loved you for years and I don’t want to ever be without you. You’re every beat of my heart and I don’t ever want to be away from you. And this is harder than I had ever expected,” he said as his body trembled.

“What is, Babe?” I asked trying to get a feel of what was going on.

I needed to confirm what was happening. I was ninety-nine percent sure but I wanted to be one hundred percent sure.

“It’s hard to put into words how I really feel for you. I love you just can’t quite cut it and I don’t want to come off as corny. The love I have for you can’t be measured and I’m so thankful that you saw something inside of me to love. Can you see yourself being with me for the rest of your life? Would you always be happy by my side? Even when I mess up or make you mad? Will you let me be the hand you’ll always hold? Will you let me be the one who stands up for you? The one that fights for you? The man that lifts all the heavy boxes for you? The man who waits for you to get ready and still tells you you’re beautiful when you make us thirty minutes late. Because if you want that, I want that. All of that, all of you. Forever.”

Oh. My. Word.

I knew the answer to all of those questions without having to think. I didn’t have to give it a second thought

“Yes, I want that.” I said as I looped arms around his neck and let the biggest smile ever form on my face.

He took another deep breath and looked up. Letting my eyes meet his bright green ones, I saw them fill with happiness and hope. And that made my heart fill with the same emotions.

For so long all I saw in his eyes was loss and pain. And in that moment any trace of those feelings was long gone.

“If I asked you to marry me, would you say yes?”

I knew that was coming but it still shocked me when he said it out loud.

“Yes.”

Helping me up from his lap, he took my hand and walked me outside.

“Where are we going?” I asked, stepping out into the crisp night air.

I was answered by the gazebo in the back yard.

It was lit up and it was surrounded by all of our friends and family.

We walked hand and hand until we were under the gazebo.

“I know you always thought I was embarrassed of you because I didn’t want to make our relationship public. But that wasn’t the case. I didn’t want to make it public because I knew I wasn’t who you were supposed to be with. And I don’t want to keep my love for you a secret any longer. So, with that being said, will you marry me and make me the envy of men everywhere?” he asked, dropping down on one knee and pulling my mother’s engagement ring from his pocket.

I opened my mouth to speak but I couldn’t get the words out. So, I just stood there and nodded. Jumping up, he pulled me into a huge hug and spun me around. And I heard everyone cheer.

That was the greatest moment of my entire life. Because there’s no feeling in the world like knowing that the person you love most in the world and you want to spend the rest of your life with wants the same thing with you.

Sitting me on my feet, he slipped the ring on my finger and I lost it. The hot tears streamed down my face.

“Why are you crying, Angel?”

“Because I’m just so happy.”

He laughed and gave me a slow, short kiss.

“I love you,” he said, wrapping me up in his arms.

“I love you.”

Love is the most important thing in the world. Without it you have nothing. But the same goes for honesty.

I had to tell West if we were going to start a life together. He deserved to know. This secret looming over us would destroy us.

And if there was thing I would fight for it was us.

I wondered what song he would send me this time and as if on cue my phone buzzed from inside of my purse. Reaching in and pulling it out, I looked down at the screen and a smile took over my face.

West- Marry Me by Train.