Lovely Pink

birthday.
Fuck.
“Why are we up here in Lance’s bed anyway? What happened to me?” I managed to ask as my chest started in with the familiar, but unwelcome tightening.
“You went sideways on me in the doorway, so I had to catch you. Lance said to put you in here.”
“You carried me up all those stairs?” I asked incredulously.
He cracked a smug grin. “I did.” He flexed a bicep into a pose for me. “The extra workouts I’ve been putting in have really paid off.”
“No wonder you had to lie down.”
“Nah, I’m kidding. You’re a feather, Pink. It was more of a chance to feel you up while I checked your vitals. I mean, I think it’s time to really get to know each other on a more intimate level before we sign off on this marriage, don’t you agree?” Gray loved to tease and flirt with me, and he always had, but this version of him felt very different. He was dead serious.
Instinctively, I started patting my hand around the bed to locate my purse. I needed a puff off my inhaler before having this conversation with him.
My asthma episodes had a way of showing up at the worst times.
Kind of like Grayson Thaddeus Lash III.
No. I didn’t want to believe this was real. He could not possibly be here calling in a promise nobody had ever really taken seriously. But you know they do.
Maybe this wasn’t asthma at all. I’d hit my head when I went down in the doorway, and my headache was back to maximum pounding, so yeah, it very well could be the effects of a head-injury combined with being trapped inside of a bizarre dream.
The same dream (nightmare) I was most surely having at this very moment.
The one where Gray was telling me we were getting married.
“No, is the wrong answer, sweetheart, and you are definitely not dreaming.”
Dear God, did I just say that out loud?
“Yes, you did. And yes, is the only answer I want to hear out of your pretty mouth. I’ll accept a yes from you, and then you can give me the date you want for the wedding.”
“What wedding?” It came out sounding more like “wha-weh-ing” but Gray totally understood me.
“Our wedding, darling, and don’t forget that time is working against us with your birthday only two months away.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
“Oh, we will, Pink, we most definitely will, don’t you worry,” he said with that sexy Carolina drawl of his that rolled off his tongue, as smoothly as his promise of some hot and dirty sex.
Would the sex be hot and dirty with Gray?
I already knew the answer to that pointless question, aaaand now I was officially out of oxygen.
“Purse—inhaler,” I gasped, before I was unable to do even that.

Chapter Three GRAY
“I would really appreciate it if you could be done with this whole no-breathing thing. I don’t like it.” I held her inhaler up to her mouth. “Big breath in for me, baby,” I coached before propping her to a sitting position against the headboard. “Slow and easy now…let the medicine go to work.”
Her green-gold eyes held mine for just a moment, before she rested her head down on her knees in exhaustion. “Graaay—”
“Shush now. Don’t try to talk. You’ve officially scared the ever lovin’ shit out of me, Pink. Breathe…steady and slow. Do you need another hit? Just nod if you do.”
She nodded and lifted her head for the inhaler, proving she was able to comprehend my panicked babbling. My hand visibly shaking as I helped her take another puff was my wake-up call that my feelings for Reese ran so much deeper than I’d ever let myself believe.
Jesus Christ, this was terrifying.
I also felt like the biggest shitheel on the planet for being the cause of the goddamn asthma attack in the first place. I fucked up with her tonight and there was no denying it.
“The paramedics are on their way, baby. You’re doin’ great.”
“No—please—I don’t want to—” she protested.
“Yes, you are going to the ER,” I interrupted, speaking as calmly as I could manage. “You need to be checked out by a doctor.” I left off the part about never sleeping again, if she didn’t get examined by a medical doctor at a fucking hospital tonight. It was a miracle I didn’t need to change my shorts right now. When she started wheezing and sucking in a whole lot of nothing? My heart—just, stopped.
A few tears rolled down her splotchy cheeks, flushed red from the rush of oxygen she was finally taking in as the rescue inhaler did its job. Thank holy fuck. “I’ll be with you every second,” I said while rubbing circles over her back with my palm.
She leaned her forehead against my chest and I felt her relax as her breathing steadied, the panic in both of us easing away. The best damn feeling in the world.
I would hold her like this forever if I had to. I couldn’t stop touching her now that I’d started. She was mine to take care of. She’d always been mine. This was the woman I was going to marry and make babies with—even if she didn’t believe it quite yet.
She would.
I’d been waiting for months to make my move. I’d almost lost her once before to that idiot archaeology professor, and I wouldn’t be letting that shit happen again. After he left her, I’d given her some time to get over him. Even if I’d wanted to go slower with Reese, time was a luxury I just didn’t have anymore. Neither of us did. The sand in our hourglass was just about gone for fulfilling the terms of her grandfather’s will. Only the two of us could make those very beneficial terms a reality by first, getting married before she turned twenty-five, and then second, by having a son whose surname would legally change to Pinkarver-Lash in order to carry on the Pinkarver name in the bloodlines.
And two months was all the