What I Want Read online

  A tear rolled down her face and she looked back at me.

  “She needs you, Josie,” I whispered. I wiped the tear away and looked closely at her for a very long moment. “I need you.”

  She closed her eyes and another tear fell. I brushed that one away too, and then I slowly leaned toward her and kissed her cheek where it had been.

  I heard her take in a sharp breath.

  “I love you,” I whispered, and I kissed her again.

  Slowly she exhaled and I moved my lips along her skin, caressing her neck and kissing where her salty tears had been.

  She grabbed for my hand and squeezed it, letting out a soft moan as I worked my way back up her throat until I found her lips. She reached her other hand to the back of my neck and pulled me closer as she kissed me back, and I moved toward her, pressing her body against the door with mine. It seemed like we kissed for an eternity, but it was nowhere near long enough.

  “I have missed you so much,” I breathed when we stopped long enough for me to talk.

  “I’ve been right here the whole time,” she said, looking at me with the slightest trace of a smile on her face.

  “No,” I answered seriously, shaking my head. “No.”

  “Well . . . I’m here now.”

  I laid my hand alongside her face and held her gaze.

  “I love you,” I whispered again.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered back.

  I looked at her.

  “That’s the first time you’ve ever told me that,” I said.

  She looked back at me uncertainly.

  “It is,” I insisted. “I’ve said it to you about twenty times but you’ve never said it back to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said ruefully.

  “It’s okay,” I assured her with a smile. “You can make it up to me.”

  “Oh, really?” she asked, a glint in her eyes now. “And how am I going to do that?”

  I only hesitated a moment before answering.

  “Marry me.”

  She looked at me in surprise.

  “I’m serious, Josie,” I said quietly. “I know you just got divorced, but I don’t want to wait. I want to marry you right now, and I want to spend every day of the rest of my life with you and I want to be there for you and I want to be there for Sophie and I want to give her lots of brothers and sisters and I want to fall asleep with you in my arms every night and wake up next to you in the morning . . .”

  I waited for her reply.

  She looked at me worriedly.

  “It’s not going to be easy,” she said, casting another glance toward Sophie. “Stuart and Rebecca are going to be a part of our lives for the next eighteen years.”

  “That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” I said, shaking my head. I had the strangest urge to smile.

  “They aren’t going to do things the same way we do,” she said anxiously. “We’re going to have to battle them about what time she should go to bed and what movies she gets to watch and who she gets to hang out with after school.

  “And Sophie’s already going to have one brother that she only gets to see part of the time,” Josette continued, talking faster. “And if we have kids–”

  “When we have kids,” I interrupted.

  “When we have kids,” she corrected, “she’s going to wonder why she’s the only one who has to go back and forth all the time and why she can’t just live in one place like they do . . .”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “And I just . . .” She dropped her eyes to the floor. “I just think you need to know that it’s not going to be easy,” she finished quietly.

  I cupped my hand under her chin and tilted her beautiful face toward mine.

  “I never said I wanted easy,” I smiled, bending my head toward hers. I found her lips and kissed her again before pulling away just long enough to whisper, “What I want is you.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The End

  ~ ~ ~

  Author’s note: Thank you for letting me share Marco’s story with you! If you enjoyed this book but haven’t yet read Chop, Chop (my first novel) I’d like for you to know that Chop, Chop is FREE on the same site from which you just downloaded this book. Just like Marco’s story, Chop, Chop is contemporary Christian fiction that stands alone! Naturally I hope you’ll love the characters and want to follow the series further (you can even catch a few glimpses of Marco in books 6-8) but I promise that—even though it’s the first in a series—you don’t have to buy the sequels. Chop, Chop won’t leave you hanging!