Page 16 of Embraced in Ink

He was always taking care of her. She was doing her best to reciprocate. She wasn’t always great at that, though.

It wasn’t that she was self-centered. No, she did her best to take care of everyone, but Marcus always seemed to be two steps ahead of her.

She felt like he had always been in her life. Ever since they were around six years old in the same grade school class and were forced to sit together when the person who had been sharing her desk had pinched her sides and pulled on her pigtails.

She’d kicked the boy in the junk, and Marcus had held her back from doing anything else, mostly because he had wanted to do it himself, but the teacher hadn’t said anything about his part.

Instead, Bristol had gotten in trouble and then was forced to sit with Marcus.

They’d become best friends after that, and had rarely been separated since.

Well, not so much in the past ten years. After she had left her twentieth birthday party, an odd agreement in the back of her mind, her life had exploded, her career on a trajectory even she and Liam couldn’t fully comprehend.

Her big brother had made it big in the modeling world, and even bigger in the author world, and now she was doing the same in the musical world.

She still couldn’t quite believe her luck, even though she knew it wasn’t simply luck. She worked long days and would have to work and practice for hours later today for her upcoming tour, as well as to start making new music because she wanted to work on another album.

So, it wasn’t only talent and luck.

She worked damn hard.

And Marcus had always been there for her, every step of the way.

She let those thoughts filter through her mind as they finished up their breakfasts, and she took his plate and his mug, doing the dishes without speaking.

“So, what are we going to do?” he asked, and she let out a shaky breath and turned to look at him in her kitchen.

He looked as if he fit there, like he’d always been part of this place. In a sense, he had. He’d helped her move into her house, helped her decide where her spices needed to go in her kitchen. He likely knew he would be doing more cooking here than she would.

He had done so much for her, and it felt like this was a new person standing in front of her now, and she had no idea what to say.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“We were lying, though... Are we truly engaged?” He voiced the words, and even though she knew he was right, it still hurt to hear them. Did he notwantto be engaged to her?

It wasn’tthatinsane a thought.

She might as well be honest. Because part of her wanted this. The bit she’d silenced for so long. And if she had this excuse...no, she couldn’t think like that. Or, could she?

“I don’t know. I mean, that was the rule we set for each other. That we would get married. It happens, right?”

She still couldn’t quite believe she’d said those words.

“You want to be engaged?” He didn’t sound incredulous. If anything, he sounded neutral, as if he were hiding his emotions. She didn’t know why that got to her more than it should.

“I don’t know.” She ran her hands through her hair and paced around the kitchen. He moved out of the way, and she was grateful because she didn’t want to run into him. Didn’t want to touch him when that action could suddenly hinder her thoughts. How had that happened so quickly? “I mean, everyone looked so happy. Like they were expecting it.”

Marcus nodded. “Everyone assumes we’ve been secretly dating this whole time. Or forever, however many months it’s been.”

“Just because they assumed we were dating, which I don’t actually believe everyone did, it doesn’t mean we actually need to go along with it.”

“I know that,” she exploded, throwing her hands up into the air. “I’m pretty sure my brothers all knew. I mean, they know everything. The fact that our mothers looked so happy, as if they had wanted this all this time… I mean, they couldn’t stop hugging each other and crying. That worries me.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, leaning against the counter. He folded his arms over his chest, and she swallowed hard. She couldn’t help it. He had taken off his jacket, and now his really sexy forearms were on display. She didn’t know when she’d started thinking of his forearms as sexy.

Had it been before the engagement, or was it a new thing?

Maybe she had just been hiding so much of what she wanted for so long because of the labels they put on each other.