Forgiving Lies

His smile grew when he got closer to me, but he didn’t pull me into his arms like he normally would. Just as I started to push myself off the wall, he spoke, his voice gruff. “I didn’t do this right the first time.” Dropping slowly to one knee, he grabbed my left hand and brought a diamond solitaire up to my ring finger. “Rachel Masters, I promise to love you and take care of you . . . no matter the cost, every day for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” I whispered, and bounced on my toes when he slid the ring onto my finger. Grabbing his face, I pulled him up and kissed him with every bit of passion in my body.

“Do you trust me to always protect you?”

Uh . . . Awkward question to follow up a proposal. I jerked back and smiled self-consciously. “Of course I do, why?”

“I just needed to make sure.”

What on earth? Before I could ask where that deep and random question came from, he hooked his arm around my neck and pulled me toward the front of the restaurant.

“Come on, let’s go home. I plan on keeping you up all night.”

Random question officially forgotten.

Kash

“THAT BETTER HAVE been a Cracker Jack ring and this better just be some sick joke you’re playing to get back at me for the honeymoon bullshit!” Mason slammed the door to my bedroom shut and began stalking back and forth.

“Did it look like a Cracker Jack ring?”

“What the fuck were you thinking?!”

That I’m in love with Rachel and I want to spend every fucking second of the rest of my life with her? I didn’t say anything, I just continued getting ready. Once my badge and gun were on my belt, I pulled a shirt on and grabbed another button-up one to put over it, leaving the buttons undone. We’d learned early on that trying to hide your gun didn’t work well if it bulged beneath your shirt.

“You’re not going to say anything?”

I sighed and faced him. “What do you want me to say?”

“That it’s a joke! That you didn’t really propose to a girl who knows nothing about you!”

“She knows me, Mase. She knows who I am. Maybe not my last name or my actual profession, but who I am as a person? She knows me.”

He looked at me like I’d lost it. Bringing his hand to his head before flinging it to the side, he shouted, “Do you even hear yourself right now?! Your. Last. Name. She doesn’t know your last name! Which means she thinks that someday she’s going to be Rachel Hendricks. Not Rachel Ryan. Didn’t you think of that? And your profession is who you are. It makes up everything that is Logan fuckin’ Ryan.”

I started walking around him and opened my door. “Whatever, I don’t need this from you right now. You’re my best friend; I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be saying congrats or something similar.”

“The hell I am! Candice isn’t even happy about this! You saw her. As soon as she saw the ring, she started screaming at Rachel and left. Rachel looked fucking crushed. She needs her best friend, and she needs a fiancé that isn’t lying to her. Don’t you understand that? You can’t do this to her. You’re going to kill her when she finds out the truth—”

“She’ll understand.”

“No, she won’t, Kash! Either tell her about who we are or break off the engagement. Today.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fine, I’ll call her and do it myself.”

I turned and swung, co

He slammed me into the hallway wall and held me there. “I love her too; I won’t let you hurt her like that! You shouldn’t have proposed until she knew everything about you and me. You should have never put her in that kind of position.” Shoving off me, he started walking away before abruptly turning back to me. “Honestly, what the hell were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t, okay? I wasn’t thinking about anything other than the fact that I love her and I know I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I got caught up in that weekend, and I could see it, Mase—God, I could see our entire freakin’ lives and I wanted it so damn bad. The last night we were there, it hit me that I was fucking terrified of not having that with her, and I asked her then. We’ve been engaged since before we came back; I just gave her the ring this weekend though. I hate lying to her; you have no idea what it’s doing to me, and you have no idea how many times I’ve almost told her everything. But I can’t do it, I need to protect her.”

“Then you shouldn’t have asked her yet.” He sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands.

“I know. But I did and I would never take that back. I love her, and I’ll always love her. I’ll tell her the truth, soon.”

“Swear?”

“Yeah.” Without another word, I walked out of the apartment and headed toward my Harley.

“Where are you going? We don’t need to leave yet.”

“Go

I started up my baby and looked at the empty space where Rachel normally parked. I knew I needed to tell her, and I knew the way I’d gone about this had probably already fucked things up beyond repair. I just prayed that when she did find out, she would understand my reasons for keeping her in the dark.

14

Rachel

I QUICKLY STEPPED out of my clothes from work and jumped into the shower after piling my hair on top of my head. The hot water ran over my body and I moaned from how good it felt. I would have loved a bath to wash the grime from the day away, but Kash would be over soon after cleaning up from the long day as well. After ru

I was positive she was trying to avoid being near me as much as possible. It didn’t make sense, but then again, she didn’t make sense to me anymore. Our entire friendship had drastically changed since the end of the last school year, and I didn’t know how to fix it. There were moments that I’d see my Candice, and then in a split second, she was gone. I sighed and brought my thoughts back to what was going right in my life to avoid getting in a funk. Right now, work was going well, Kash was amazing, and this hot shower felt like heaven. If I hadn’t been expecting Kash soon, I wouldn’t have been able to force myself to leave. As it was, I was ready for alone time with my man. I smiled to myself and turned off the water, towel-dried my body, and got in some comfy clothes before going out to the kitchen to find something to snack on.

I stumbled when I turned into the kitchen and caught sight of the unexpected shadowed objects waiting for me, but laughed when I flipped on the light. This boy. I swear. I walked over to the large mixing bowl, measuring cups, and pancake mix on the counter and glanced at the skillet on the stove, which was already turned on. I could feel the heat coming off it from where I was standing, and after dribbling water over my fingers at the sink, I flicked some drops at the skillet and watched them instantly sizzle and evaporate. Damn. He must’ve come in and turned it on right after I got in the shower.

Taking the hint, I started in on the batter at the same time my phone went off.

KASH:

I’m starving, do you want anything?

Fu