99 Percent Mine

When a group of men are walking in, you should work out which one is the alpha

“Please, please, give me something better than sugar. I really need it.” Just saying it aloud chokes me up. I need a hug. I need someone’s warm skin on mine. I ache with loneliness, and I still would, even if Vince came and went.

I could hear their drunk, high-pitched whispers. She looks normal. Sweet. So small! How does she cope with that . . . monster? We should rescue her.

Maybe he keeps her chained in his basement.

I waved like a dork to show that I was not shackled and was there of my own free will. They shrank back, then fell totally silent as their chief financial officer, aka the Overlord, approached me with a glass of wine. His eyes were soft with tenderness and my heart stopped beating until he restarted it with a kiss. The Overlord snuggled me into his side, fitting us together just right. Hard and soft. Darkness and light. Good cop, bad cop.

I registered the jaws dropping. He’s smiling!

I’m more beautiful than I’ve ever been in my life. I know it because Tom tells me, and wherever I go, people fall in love with me.

“I want it,” I repeat. I mean the house, the ring, and him. The future. “I love you and I want it.”

Tom leans down to kiss my pout. “Have you earned it?”

I falter. I shake my head automatically. “How can I possibly earn you?”

He removes my tremor of doubt as only he can. “You earn me daily. Come on. You know I give you everything you want. Just relax. Let me spoil Darcy Barrett a little, for the rest of her life. Let me get a taste of that feeling.”

All I can say is, it tastes sweet.

Take a look, everyone. Look what I have. Look what’s all mine

Is there anything more obnoxious than blissed-out-in-love people? Don’t care.

“It’s okay, just relax,” Tom tells me and Jamie when we both tighten up. It’s in that tone we can never resist. “We’ll get you fixed up, Darce. Good as new. We’ve got a cruise to go on when we’re eighty,” he explains to the doctor. “We need her there for it.”

“I think that can be arranged,” Dr. Galdon says with a laugh. “As long as she’s got someone looking after her until then.”

“She will,” Jamie and Tom say in unison. Just like twins.

I’m so lucky that the room fills with it. Pip-pip-pip, my heart beats like I’m going to live forever. I need it to.

“You still want me? Even though I’m a screwup?” he asks as he lifts his head, and there’s that dark, dangerous glint that only I can recognize. Everyone else sees a mild-mannered sweetheart. But right here, in these moments between us,
he’s my Valeska. The one I’ve always needed beside me, every step that I take.

“One hundred percent mine.”

He considers that, then maybe he remembers the desperate hug that my brother gave me. He tips his head toward the door. “Better let him have one percent of me.” He smiles, and I laugh.

“Okay. Ninety-nine percent mine. That’s got a nice ring to it. Never say that I’m not open to negotiation. Now. I’m going to tell you exactly how much I love you.”

“I already know how much.”

I shake my head. “You can’t know. I haven’t told you.”

“You have always made me feel it. Always.” His eyes burn with intensity. “It’s how I can watch you smile at good-looking delivery drivers. No stranger is going to talk to you for two minutes and take you away from me. You wouldn’t allow it.”

He’s not indulging himself in male arrogant bullshit. He’s doing what he does best: He’s telling the truth.

He keeps going. “It’s why you’ve treated me all these years like protecting me is your job. And no one else has ever tried, by the way. Everyone else thinks I’m completely fine, but you’ve always known that I need you, in every way. You’ve felt it.”

I nod, my breath stuck in my throat.

“You’ve never dated anyone you could love, because you didn’t want anything to threaten how you feel for me. You were always alone at the Christmas table, looking at me and
Megan, with eyes like you were waiting for me to get it together and realize. Sitting outside alone on the back stairs, looking up at the stars, waiting on me.”

He’s touching me now, slow and easy, like I’m an animal he could startle. “You’ve avoided me for years and traveled, because it was too much for you. You’re scared to death because a person like you only loves once. And it’s me.”

a conversation with no words—louder and louder, talking over each other: Listen to me. No, you listen to me.

In unison: I will kill anyone who touches you.