Until the End (Sea Breeze #9)(59)

“Preston is on his way here. Marcus said he’s desperate to get to you. He swears he’s never touched anyone. And Jill Vick is the waitress at Live Bay with the pink tips in her hair, who Preston asked Rick to move from his table last week. Apparently, she was flirting with him.”

I remembered her. She had really big boobs. I was jealous, and Preston got pissed when she wouldn’t take a hint. I didn’t know he’d had Rick move her, though. “She kept showing Preston her cle**age, or trying to. He wouldn’t look at her, and he kept pulling me closer to him until he was behind me, wrapping his arms around me. But I have big-boob envy, and hers made me feel self-conscious.”

Willow sat down beside me and patted my knee. “I think we have a case of someone setting Preston up. He’s on his way right now. When he gets here, do you want me to stay or go?”

I didn’t want to talk about all this in front of my sister-in-law. “You can go,” I told her. “Thank you for coming, though.”

She nodded. “It ain’t over yet. If Marcus doesn’t get some proof, he’s going for Preston’s throat. Dewayne and Rock are still with Marcus, though, so they should keep your fiancée alive and your brother out of prison.”

If she wasn’t being serious, I would have laughed.

The door to our apartment flew open. “Manda!” Preston called out.

“He’s here,” Willow said, then stood up. “I’ll let y’all talk.”

Willow was walking to the bedroom door when Preston called my name again, sounding panicked.

“She’s in here,” Willow replied, and just as she walked out, Preston came barreling in, looking like a man on a mission.

“Swear to God I have no idea how that number got in my phone, and I’d never, ever f**king ever touch anyone but you,” Preston swore, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me up. “I don’t f**king know that bitch. I just know that’s what Rick called her when I asked him to keep her the hell away from me. She got to my phone somehow. I’ll figure it out, but I need you to believe me. Never, baby. God, I would never do that to you.”

The desperation in his voice as he held me so tightly that it was hard to breathe was all I needed. He was telling me the truth. This was the man I knew. The one who loved me. The one I trusted with my life. My happiness.

He was mine.

“I believe you,” I said, reaching up to touch his long blond locks. “But I can’t breathe.”

His arms loosened a little, and he continued to stand there breathing hard. “Swear to God,” he said again.

“I know,” I assured him.

He was rocking me now as we stood there. I could feel his heart slamming against his chest. This had scared him. All my pain was now replaced with sympathy for him.

“Did Marcus touch you?” I asked, trying to pull back to look more closely at his face, but he wouldn’t give an inch. He buried his face in my neck.

“No. But only because Dewayne and Rock held him back while he yelled.”

“I’m sorry,” I said as I tried to calm him.

“Don’t apologize for this, Manda. This shit was because of me. Not you.” He finally eased back enough to kiss me softly. “Just you, pretty girl,” he said against my mouth.

“I know,” I assured him.

“Gonna marry you, pretty girl.”

I smiled at that reminder. “Yeah.”

“I need you now, pretty girl,” he said as he trailed kisses down my neck and started making quick work of my clothes. “Hate that you’ve been crying. I don’t want you to cry. I hate it. I want you smiling,” he said against my collarbone. “Only crying you need to do ever is my name when you come.”

“Mmmmm,” I agreed as his attention moved to my br**sts , which he was very happy with. He didn’t seem to mind their small size. He made me feel perfect and beautiful.

He was my one.

Preston

My phone had been swiped from the table last week, when I was dancing with Amanda while Rock went to get a beer. The waitress Rick had sent me was a friend of Jill’s, so she did the dirty work. Jill’s plan was to send naughty texts until either Amanda saw it or I called the number, and if I called, she was going to try to talk me into meeting up with her.

The other waitress had sung like a bird when Rick called all the waitresses into the office and asked about it. Jill was fired, and so was the waitress who had helped her.

Marcus no longer wanted to kill me, and we were now back to being happy about becoming family. Not that we weren’t family before. Dewayne, Rock, and Marcus had been my family since second grade.

I hadn’t been allowed to see Manda all day. All damn day. Willow said it was bad luck. I tried telling her that nothing about Manda was bad luck. Willow had laughed at me and gone back to guarding Manda.

The wedding pictures that could be taken without me seeing my bride had been taken, and we had one hour before the wedding started.

I wanted to see my pretty girl. I didn’t like waking up to find a note on the pillow explaining that Willow had come and taken her away in the middle of the night. I wasn’t liking my future sister-in-law very much right now.

“Where are you going?” Dewayne asked with a smirk when I turned down the hall of the chapel toward the bridal room.