Not the Marrying Kind Page 32

  When I finally lifted my face from her hair, she was—thank god—still there, still real, not a dream. She was blissed out, lipstick and mascara smeared. Hair snarled.

  She opened her eyes. “You were right about riding a motorcycle, Max.”

  “What’s that, princess?” I brushed her hair from her face and kissed the tip of her nose.

  “Riding it does feel like fucking.”

  49

  Fiona

  An hour later, after we’d had sex again, Max set up a floor picnic for the two of us. He opened a bottle of red wine and had pizza delivered. I wore his shirt, and he wore sweatpants and no shirt, and we both had the kind of bedhead that comes from hard, satisfying fucking.

  Satisfying wasn’t really the best description for the sex we’d just had. Epic was more accurate. Max and I had kissed and tasted and fucked each other with a raw urgency. There were bruises on my hips, a burn between my thighs, marks on my neck.

  Over and over we’d whispered I need you.

  Over and over we’d whispered I love you.

  Now, with pizza and wine between us, we stared at each other with shy expressions. I bit the tip of my thumb and gave him the biggest, cheesiest grin. “Bad news,” I said.

  His dark eyes were warm. “What’s that, princess?”

  “I really think our friendship is over.”

  His laughter gave me goosebumps. “That’s a damn shame. This is another first for me, but I think riding a motorcycle across the country automatically makes you my girlfriend. Right?”

  Sparks. Everywhere.

  “I believe that to be true.” I pretended to assess him. “You make a very cute boyfriend.”

  “Cuter than Brett?”

  I leaned over our food and planted a kiss on his mouth. “Never heard of him.”

  He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I can’t believe you came to get me.”

  I sat back, wrapped my arms around my knees. “I was just so sure that we’d made a mistake. Let our fears get in the way of our happiness. I knew you were my soul mate, Max. Knew it deep in my heart. I decided to be brave. Chase a little joy, do something a bit spontaneous.”

  “And how was it?” he asked. “Living free, on the road?”

  I allowed a dramatic pause. “I fucking loved it.”

  His crooked grin weakened my knees. “You’re really a bad girl now.”

  I pointed at him. “Bad influence.”

  “I’m a gentleman. Always have been.”

  I pulled off a bite of pizza, popped in my mouth. He sipped his wine. “Would a gentleman leave hand-prints on my ass from spanking?”

  He shook his head. “Such a smart mouth.”

  We ate in slightly shy, happy silence for a moment. But then I placed my plate down, picked up my glass. “These past ten days have been like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. This country, it’s so big. Everything had me in awe. I was inspired and curious. I had a lot of fucking fun. And I loved it.”

  “I thought you might,” he said. “There’s wanderlust in your soul, Fiona Quinn.”

  “I think you’re right,” I admitted. Then I poked him in the arm. “I went to Moab, per your recommendation.”

  “Hell yeah,” he said. “You saw those canyons, right?”

  “And the Milky Way,” I said, swallowing past a rush of emotion. “My first time seeing it.”

  He gave me a cute, lopsided smile. “It blows my mind every time.”

  That night, I’d sat on my bike and watched an entire universe reveal itself. Beneath those stars and planets, the only thing missing was Max, sitting next to me.

  “What about you? What happened with the job? You’re really… coming home?” My voice caught at the end. Max reached forward, curled his fingers through mine.

  “I’m really coming home,” he said. “I’ve got some resumes out at shops in the city. I’ll crash with Pop, help him at The Red Room, until I get my own place. Besides, I want to be there for Mateo and Rafael while they plan their wedding. And I want, I need, to be with you.”

  I blinked back tears.

  “I spent these four weeks heartbroken. Miserable and depressed and crying over love songs on the fucking radio. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t eat. Mateo and Pop had an intervention and told me I was a dipshit who was totally in love with you and I needed to make it right.”

  A tear rolled down my cheek. “I was just devastated, Max. I’m so sorry. About how it all went down, about everything.”

  Max grabbed my hand, face serious. “Fiona, no. It wasn’t your fault. Not at all. You were right. I thought I was destined to make the same choices as my mom, to be the kind of person who continually disappointed her loved ones. To break vows and break up families and always, always leave in the end.” His voice grew hoarse. “I thought you’d be better off without me. This, this feeling, of falling in love with you, was the most powerful feeling I’d ever had. And I ran, instead of facing it. With you.”

  I pushed the plates aside so I could crawl into Max’s lap. He held me close, nudged his nose against mine. “I still had hang-ups I needed to process,” I said. “Things I needed to, and want to, compromise on with you. I want us to be real partners in life, and I don’t care what that looks like. Whatever the adventure is, I just want to do it together. I had a lot of time to think these past ten days, to think about what you showed me. Loving you is unquantifiable. Love’s not a calculated risk. It’s a leap of faith.”

  He tugged me closer. “Do you want to leap with me?”

  I pressed my lips to his. “I’d say we already have.” I pulled back to catch his eye. “I love my fucking bike.”

  His smile was slow and sexy. “Dream woman, Fiona.”

  “I know that,” I teased. “I want you to move home and be with me. I also want to spend a lot of time on road trips with you. Getting lost. Seeing this country. Being a little more free. We can have roots and still be wild. Your itchy feet aren’t a negative thing about you. And I don’t want you to suppress something that makes you happy.”

  Max brushed the hair from my shoulder, studying me. “I’d like that a whole hell of a lot. I promise I make gettin’ a little lost on the road really fun.”

  I laughed. “I can’t wait for whatever depraved sex acts you have planned for me.”

  His brow arched. “Speaking of plans.” He set me down gently. Grabbed what looked like a sheet of paper before returning. He coughed, looking nervous for the first time. “I, uh… well, I had to go to an office supply store and ask them how to put that hard plastic on it. And I even picked up a couple packs of sticky notes.”

  My eyes widened. I gripped the paper. The laminated paper. “Wait. You mean you had this laminated?”

  Max sank down next to me, linking our hands together again. “Yeah. The nice guy who worked there helped me figure it out. I told him I was about to go pledge my undying love to a woman with an adorable obsession with outcomes and spreadsheets.”

  My heart stuttered to a stop. I was holding a goddamn laminated piece of paper with How I’ll Prove My Commitment to Fiona across the top.

  “Oh my god,” I whispered.

  “Like Pop, I’m not, uh… the best with words. But I wrote this up and Mateo helped. I know what commitment means to you. And my track record on sticking around is pretty shit. So I thought I’d show you that I am the marrying kind.”

  Stunned, I looked down at the paper. It was a neatly typed list. Cook her dinner whenever she asks. Take her dancing at The Red Room. Go on an epic road trip. Call her all the time. Learn how to give a real foot massage. Dress up as David Bowie and perform “Young Americans” to make her laugh. Have a picnic date at Central Park. Go to band practice with The Hand Grenades. Hang out with Roxy and Edward. Introduce Fiona to Mateo’s family. Take her as my date to Mateo’s wedding.

  The list went on and on. He’d signed and dated it at the bottom.

  “It’s no light celibacy contract,” he said, with a wicked smile. “But I want
you to know that I’m way past trying, princess. I want to commit to all of you.”

  I closed my eyes. More tears rolled down my cheeks. This moment, right here, was bonfire flames and city nights and live music and free-falling all rolled into one.

  What a fucking rush.

  The hurricane was back, and I welcomed it, welcomed the way Max made my heart feel absolutely exhilarated with loving him.

  “I’m ready,” I said. I crawled back into his lap and kissed Max with all of my longing, all of my yearning. “Let’s fall together.”

  We didn’t leave that floor for a long time after.

  The next morning, Max and I both straddled our motorcycles, helmets tucked under our arms. The sky was a gorgeous peach-pink as the sun rose and birds sang in the trees.

  It was going to be a good day.

  “We really have twenty days to get home?” Max asked, squinting into the sun.

  I let out a happy sigh. “Sure do. I’ll let you lead if you promise to take me to your favorite spots.”

  “Well damn, Fiona.” He grinned. “This is gonna be an epic fucking road trip.”

  “That was kind of my plan.”

  He leaned forward for a quick kiss. “I love your plans. By the way, I synced our stereo systems up.” He held up his phone. “I was thinking The Clash for our first ride together?”

  Max looked as devilishly handsome as the moment we’d re-met on that fire escape. I fisted his shirt and yanked him back for a harder kiss. “And I’m thinking we should fulfill that motorcycle fantasy soon.”

  Max winked at me before tugging his helmet on. “Your new boyfriend is at your service.”

  It was a moment I’d remember forever. The music, the sound of our engines, the breeze, Max’s laughter, my heart racing, my pulse roaring in my ears. This was love—in all of its wild and unruly chaos.

  This was truly chasing joy.

  Max gave me that swoon-worthy grin before roaring off down the road.

  As it turned out, my proven system of contracts and outcomes had been wrong after all. True love couldn’t be tied to any data point or personal outcome. What I felt for Max was undefinable and exhilarating, beautiful and mysterious.

  Which was the point. My soul mate had shown me that.

  As the sun rose above me, I rode down the road, following my bad boy with the heart of gold. I’d fallen hopelessly in love with the anti-Prince Charming.

  And I was no princess in need of saving.

  But we finally got our fairytale ending.

  Epilogue

  MAX

  Eighteen Months Later

  I tapped my foot in time to the music coming from beneath the fire escape. It was Friday night at The Red Room, and a small crowd of people was already spilling out onto the street, waiting for my signal.

  The ring box sat propped on my knee. I flicked it open, then closed. Thought about the night Fiona and I re-met each other on this fire escape. The way she’d turned me down had my palms sweating and my head spinning.

  And then she went ahead and stole my heart while she was at it.

  Right on schedule, my gorgeous girlfriend hooked her fingers beneath the open window and easily climbed through. Barefoot, of course.

  “Don’t fall,” I said with a grin. Fiona blew the hair from her eyes and beamed at me.

  “Wait. Are you Max Devlin?”

  “You laugh,” I drawled. “But you were a real heartbreaker that night, princess.”

  She pursed those mischievous lips. “I heard it turned out alright, though.”

  “Really? I heard they’re just friends.”

  She laughed before settling between my legs, back to my chest. She wiggled, got close. It was a crisp and chilly November night, so I wrapped my arms around her and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

  This vantage point would be perfect. The planning for this night had been a lot, but if there was anything Fiona appreciated, it was a damn good plan. Something I’d learned in the past year of living together with her adorably organized ways. Six months after we rode back into the city on our motorcycles, Fiona and I moved into an apartment in the East Village, close to The Red Room, Pop, and Mateo’s gallery. It was filled with records and checklists, bike tools and concert posters. Music was always playing, and more often than not, we ended up dancing in our living room after dinner.

  I’d never known a sweeter happiness than this.

  On Sundays we rode our motorcycles to Queens for pancake breakfast with the Quinn family. And then we spent whole hours on our bikes, no directions or plans, just wandering. We’d even taken another month-long road trip all the way up to Canada last year. Fiona loved my itchy feet and the many places they took us.

  But, really, I would have been happy with Fiona anywhere.

  “Are you having a good thirtieth birthday?” I asked, kissing her cheek.

  She sighed, pressed her cheek to mine. “The fucking best. And I appreciated the trio of orgasms you provided me before coming here to dance all night.”

  “Well, I wanted to give you thirty, but we ran out of time.”

  She giggled against my neck. I held her tighter. My symptoms had never gone away. She still controlled my heartbeat. She still spun my thoughts and dazzled me. As soul mates went, Fiona was the best one.

  So before I could lose my cool—which still happened a lot around her—I held the black ring box out, turning my head so I could see her expression.

  Her lips parted. Her fingers tightened their grip on my arms. “Max?”

  I dropped a kiss onto her shoulder. “Fiona,” I whispered.

  Her eyes were filling with tears.

  “I know you voided your contract for a reason,” I said. “And I’m so proud of you for letting yourself fall in love with me without a goal tied to it. You’ve told me a million times you’d be happy to be with me however we choose, and I agree. I just want to hold you every day for the rest of our lives.”

  I opened the box. Inside was a delicate, rose gold band with a teardrop diamond. Beautiful, elegant and oh-so-Fiona.

  Roxy had helped me choose it.

  “Is that… that’s for me?”

  I chuckled. “As it turns out, princess, I am the marrying kind. If you’ll have me, I’d love to marry the hell out of you.”

  Fiona laughed, hand flying to her mouth, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Max.”

  “Being your husband would make me the luckiest damn guy in the whole world.” Her eyes held mine. The band changed songs below us. The opening chords of “Train in Vain” floated up to the fire escape.

  “Did you plan that?” she whispered.

  “The night of our first date, when I saw you dancing to this song in the crowd, I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my whole life.” I swallowed, but my throat was too tight. Fiona cupped my cheek, stroked her thumbs across my skin.

  It was now or never.

  I raised a hand in the air. There was a shout from below. And then, on the side of the building facing us, the wall lit up with a message.

  Will you marry me, Fiona Quinn?

  Mateo was a fucking genius. The lights were perfect. And the crowd below us got louder.

  “Oh my god,” she said. She stood quickly, hands gripping the railing, peering at the lit-up question. She was half-laughing, half-crying. And when she turned back around, I was down on one knee, engagement ring in my hand.

  “Fiona Lennox Quinn,” I said, completely unable to stop the giant grin from spreading across my face. Or my own tears. “Would you marry me?”

  Fiona launched herself at me so hard we almost fell off the goddamn fire escape.

  “Yes!” she cheered. I was smothered in kisses then, the two of us laughing and crying so much I almost forgot to give the final signal.

  I threw my hand up in the air again, and the crowd broke out into applause.

  “Princess,” I said, “You have some people who want to see you.”

  “Wait… what?�
�� She was flushed and tear stained. But she ducked her head over the railing and then gasped. I followed, waving below to our friends and family. Lou and Sandy, Pop and Angela, Mateo and Rafael. Edward and Roxy, who had a bullhorn at her mouth.

  “Are you getting married or what, Fi?” Roxy yelled.

  Fiona threw her hands in the air and whooped. “Fuck yes!”

  The band started playing again, and the whole block started dancing. I caught Pop’s eye. He gave me a short nod and a big smile. Mateo and Rafael were dancing. Fiona’s parents were just outright sobbing right next to Mr. and Mrs. Rivera.

  Fiona leapt into my arms and kissed me. Again and again. “Can I propose an idea that’s a little chaotic and spontaneous?”

  “Please,” I said. “That’s my favorite kind of idea.”

  “What if we got married tomorrow? Here at The Red Room?”

  I pulled back to stare at her, brow arched. “Uh, what?”

  “You think I can’t plan a wedding in twenty-four hours?”

  I burst out laughing. “I can’t wait to marry you. Let’s do it. Plus, our entire wedding party is already down there. Why don’t you just invite ’em now?”

  Fiona leaned over the railing. “Is everyone free tomorrow night for a surprise wedding at The Red Room?”

  There was a beat of silence. And then Lou yelled, “We’ll be there with bells on, Fiona Quinn!”

  Fiona cast me a sly look. “I think they’re in.” Then she yelled, “Perfect. Then I have to go plan a wedding, and all of you need to show up here to dance until dawn. Sound good?”

  The roar from the street was almost deafening.

  But not as loud as my heart, pounding in my chest. I yanked Fiona back into my arms and kissed the tip of her nose. “We did plan a benefit show in twelve days. Our track record is solid.”

  “Planning a wedding in twenty-four hours is, technically, my idea of a good time.”

  I lifted her chin with the tip of my finger. “Oh, I know. Which means we should probably take one more spin in the supply closet for old time’s sake. Last time before we’re husband and wife and all.”