Or rather the ring.

“I watched Lexi die. Day by day, breath by breath. And when I wasn’t watching her, I was busy watching Danny fall apart. We were all devastated when she died, but he lost himself for a while. And then there’s Maddie and everything she’s gone through….” My voice fades off as I try to get a grip on my emotions so that I can get through this without breaking down because I really need Becks not to just listen to me, but to really hear me.

He runs a hand up and down my bare leg, my concentration so fierce to keep it all together that I don’t even realize he’s doing it until I feel the ache unfurl in my center. I welcome the feeling but know I can’t sate it until I finish this.

I’m trying to turn over a new leaf. Talk, then action; reason, then lust.

“So after Lex died, of course, the worry turned to me in my family. I’d already thought about it, already knew deep down, somehow that I had the same fate.” He starts to shake his head and correct me, but I stop him by bringing my finger to his lips. “Not the dying part, but the breast cancer part. It all weighed heavy on me, stole me from myself really. Then one night after I picked the broken pieces of Danny off his living room floor, knowing he’d never really be whole again, I swore I’d never do that to someone. I’d never let anyone get close enough to me so that when I eventually got sick, they’d have to suffer like Danny did. I vowed to protect the people I cared about, the people who had choices to avoid being in that situation … to never let someone love me….” The first tear falls over and slides down my cheek.

“Haddie.” My name is a sigh on his lips as he reaches up and wipes the tear away before I shake my head for him to leave it. He can’t touch me or I’ll fall apart, and I can’t fall apart yet. I need to finish this before I can break. Then I can use him—use us—to help fortify myself so we can move forward.

“I know, but it made perfect sense to me. And then you happened.” I look at him and see so many things that I never expected, most of which are the parts of me I’d lost with Lexi’s death. “I don’t know how to explain what … how you …”

“You don’t need to because I feel the same.” He scrunches his head down so that his eyes are even with mine.

“No, I do need to,” I explain, finding my words again. “You told me you loved me, and I stood there and shoved you away. I hurt you on purpose, and that has eaten at me. All I wanted to do was to call you and tell you I was sorry, that I didn’t mean what I said, but I was trying to protect you from this.” I put my hands out in front of my chest, my eyes closing momentarily while I try to figure out how else to emphasize how sorry I am.

“Had.” His hands are back on my face, directing it up so that I have no choice but to meet his eyes. “I told you I was in it for the fight. I wasn’t going anywhere. I still am and always will be.”

He leans forward and kisses my forehead as we both accept the moment, the possible future, the definite fight we have ahead of us.

“But aren’t you worried that you’re going to be with this girl who’s going to be a hot mess … who’s going to lose her hair, possibly be infertile, be sick all the time from chemo or radiation … who might not make it?” My voice breaks. My words sound so hollow, so foreign as I try to disengage myself from those truths that I hate to say but need to clarify nonetheless.

“Montgomery.” I’m so in my own head momentarily that it takes the third or fourth attempt for me to hear him. Startled, my eyes flash back up to him. “I say this with all of the courtesy in the world … but shut the hell up. I don’t want to hear—”

“I know, but it’s reality and reality is—”

His hand goes playfully over my mouth so that the rest of my sentence sounds like a muffled garble. “Uh-uh. This is where you stay quiet, and I get to talk. Understood?” I hear the teasing in his tone but also hear the authority.

I nod my head as he blows out a breath and runs his free hand through his hair before setting it back down on my bare thigh. “You don’t get it, do you?” He smiles softly and angles his head to stare at me, his thumb rubbing circles absently on my leg. “That first night … hell, you asked for no strings, but I knew if I had you, I’d only want more. Then I tried tying those damn strings any way I could, but you severed them just as quickly as I knotted them.” He shakes his head for a moment before meeting my eyes with a vivid clarity in his gaze. “You’re that once-in-a-lifetime type of woman, Haddie.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re the goddamn priceless Macallan.”

I scrunch up my nose and look at him. Then our conversation from my doorstep weeks ago comes back to finally make sense of his words. The sincerity in his tone strikes me next, and his conviction has my chest constricting with the emotion I feel for him.

“Well, at least I’m a good one,” I say, earning a smile from him.

“The best.” He nods his head with a murmured appreciation. “I wouldn’t care if you were a Two Buck Chuck bottle … I’ll pick you every time, Haddie. Scars, inability to have kids, bald, sick, emotional … you’re beautiful to me. Every single way. I’ll still pick you every goddamn time.” His eyes bore into mine. They dance with the same emotion his tone reflects. “There’s just always been something about you that I can’t resist….”

Tears flood my eyes—and the overwhelming acceptance he’s just given me is undeserved but gives me the courage to start taping up the boxing gloves for the fight of my life.

With him in my corner.

And it’s funny. All along I’ve told him no strings—pushed him away the minute they even started to intertwine—so I never realized how liberating it would be when I willingly tied them myself.

I start to become comfortable with the idea, accept it, and something he said at the farmhouse hits me.

“It’s the click.”

“Yes, the click,” he says with a soft chuckle. “But you know what? The click’s irrelevant now. The click was our initial connection. Now? Now it’s the clanking.”

“Clanking?” What in the hell is he talking about?

“Yep. It’s the sound the chains are making as I wrap them around your heart and shut the damn lock.” He flashes a cocky grin at me that does ridiculous things to my insides. “Screw the strings. They can be cut. I’m using chains to tie us together because it takes a hell of a lot more to break those.”

I try to mask the girlie sigh that wants to fall from my lips in giddiness. “That sounds kind of kinky.” I raise my eyebrows at him, my heart full and the coil of desire only increasing.

A slow smile spreads across his lips. “They sound a little unforgiving, but damn, City, we just might have to try that out. It kind of turns me on.”

I lean forward and kiss him. “Promise?” I whisper, my lips moving against his.

“I’ll promise you whatever you want as long as you tell me you’re not going to push me away again.” The playfulness in his eyes fades to solemnity. I can tell I’ve hurt him and hate myself for it.

I reach out and smooth a hand over his chest and up to the line of his jaw. “I’m not going to promise I’m not going to push, Becks, because I’m going to get scared. Hell, I’m already scared about what’s going to come … but I promise that I’m not going to run. I’m not going to shut you out. Because we are,” I tell him. He gives a devastating smile. I lean forward and taste his temptation and lose myself for a moment in it.

I rest my forehead against his, my last confession burning on my tongue. “I’ve used sex for so long to make me feel so I can forget, and I don’t want to do that anymore,” my lips whisper against his as I lay all my cards on the table. I can feel the heat of his breath, smell the scent of his cologne as I wait to make sure he hears my words. “You’ve changed that for me. My gloves are on, Becks, but they’re for the one battle I’ve yet to fight…. There’s no need to wear them with you….” I press another kiss to his lips and move my hands to the base of his neck so that my hands can play idly in his hair. “I know how I feel about you, and now it’s time to show you. Let me make love to you.”

I hear his quick intake of breath, his body tensing in momentary restraint before I feel his lips spread into a smile against mine.

“You don’t have to ask twice,” he laughs, and in a swift motion, his hands have lifted my tank top over my head.

The minute it clears my face, I have only a moment to see the fire in his eyes before his lips are on mine. I drown in the intensity of the kiss, his complete dominance of my senses as he uses his mouth to own each and every sound he coaxes from me while his hands skim over the bare flesh of my back.

They graze across my rib cage to my chest, and I can’t help but freeze when he cups both of my breasts. Cold, hard reality pulls me from the eroticism of the moment and the hot sex that’s in my near future. “Becks …”

He brings his lips to my ear, where his heated breath warms my skin. “You are so fucking beautiful, Haddie Montgomery, with or without these.” He flicks his thumbs over my hard nipples, causing me to gasp from the sensation. “These do not make you the woman I love. Not in the least. You got that?”

He presses a soft kiss to the space just below my ear as the emotion and meaning behind his words hit me like a one-two combo punch. My eyes well with tears but I don’t have a chance to comprehend anything else because Becks closes his mouth over one of my nipples and sucks.

Emotions mix with sensations and tackle me from every angle as I move my hips to try to relieve the ache he’s adding to with his alternating sucks and scrapes of teeth. “Sweet, sweet Haddie,” he murmurs to me, followed by a satisfied grown in the back of his throat.

He takes his time enjoying my breasts, all the while removing my shorts, his clothes, and I’m so taken by his thoroughness and adept skill that it rather shocks me to find that he’s also repositioned me. My ass hangs half off the couch, my shoulders against the back of it, and my legs are spread wide.

He begins to kiss his way down my abdomen as I feel the featherlight touch of his fingertips skimming from my knee up the inside line of my thigh. Soft and gentle. Thorough and attentive.

So damn addictive.

I exhale when his fingers brush over my sex, a teasing taunt that causes me to tilt my hips and physically ask for more. He chuckles softly, his fingers parting me at the same time he blows softly on my clit. “Becks …”

“Mm. I want to taste you,” he murmurs a second before I watch him lower and then feel his mouth on my bared flesh. And it’s not like I’m not watching him do it, but the warmth of his mouth still shocks me, makes me tense up.

His fingers slide back and forth once, then twice, before he tucks them into me. I’m wet instantly, my body so primed for him as he begins to slide his fingers in and out of me at the same time his tongue laves my external center of nerves. I weave my fingers in his hair, a gentle way to tell him when the sensations are just too much. And when I tug on his hair, he just laughs softly, the vibration of it an added element to his ministrations as he completely ignores my request.

He looks up at me, eyes hungry with a carnal sensuality. “You said you wanted to feel for the right reasons … so sit back, do anything but shut up—hell, scream if you want—and let me make you feel to remember … not to forget.”

He presses a kiss to the top of my sex before using his tongue to part me as he slides back down. This time, though, his fingers pull out to part me so that his tongue can plunge in, driving my need to levels that render me senseless.

Soon the ragged cry falls from my mouth, and I push my hips toward his mouth and my head falls back against the couch while I absorb the seduction of his tongue. I force myself to open my eyes so that I can watch him manipulate me, own me … love me.

And there is something so raw and real in the moment his eyes raise to meet mine, my taste on his tongue and my body at his mercy, that I begin to tremble as the first strains of my orgasm begin to pulse through me.

“Oh God!” I cry out when it hits me full force, lost to him and the moment because this may be a physical release, but it’s also the emotional offering of my heart. My body slowly liquefies as the spasms abate, Becks still groaning with desire as he tastes my pleasure.

I swear I hear him say, “That’s one,” but I’m so lost to the world beyond that using energy to respond is nearly impossible.