Serious Engagement Trouble

Chapter 1

Quin

What is the perfect age for a boy to get married? Research shows that the average age for men in the US is 30.2 years old. I’m not. I’m 24. Cage is 27. Both of us would be considered young.

But the average age is 30.2, which means that some guys get married when they’re older, and they need some men to get married when they’re younger to keep the average at 30. If some guys weren’t willing to get married at, oh, I don’t know, 24, then the national average would get thrown off. Chaos would ensue.

So those guys need guys my age to get married. Actually, America needed guys like me to get married. So if Cage didn’t propose to me this weekend, he would be letting our country down.

Did he know this? Did he know that the American way of life depended on him asking me to marry him soon, preferably on the third floor of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Public Library? No pressure, but the global world order depended on it.

Staring down at him as he slept, I considered waking him. He needed to know this. The only thing stopping me was how comfortable he looked. He was on vacation, after all. I wasn’t.

Since graduating from East Tennessee University, I had been working in New York at my father’s investment firm. I had been working remotely for the last three years from our home in Snow Tip Falls, but Daddy Laine had allowed it only because I was still in school.

Like everyone else, he knew that I didn’t need to go to college. I always had this job waiting for me, and I had had the equivalent of multiple advanced degrees before stepping foot on campus.

For me, university was about the other stuff: building friendships, understanding people, and, if I was lucky, getting my Mr. degree. Saying that works a lot better when it’s Mrs., but I’m a boy looking for a husband, so Mr.

Thankfully, attending university had been a success. I had developed friends—especially my best friend and roommate for four years, Lou. I had found a family and community with everyone in Snow Tip Falls, my adopted home. And I had found my boyfriend, Cage, the sweetest, kindest, hottest guy I had ever met.

Not only was he the high school football coach every student loved, he was Snow Tip Falls’ unofficial Sheriff. The town had only recently incorporated, so two years on, the details of things were still being worked out. But because no one else wanted the job, and Cage already gave off small town sheriff vibes in the best possible way, he was it.

Titus, the town’s mayor, was still working on getting him things like a uniform and squad car, but they would come. It was enough that everyone knew Cage was the person to call if they needed anything. And when they called, Cage took care of it.

That was my man. Now here he was, sleeping in my childhood bed in New York City. The whole thing felt weird but very right. He was a small town Southern boy at heart, so I wasn’t sure how much he liked the big city. But for me, having him here, getting a taste of how I grew up, meant the world.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, and I wanted him to know everything about me. I wanted to take him to the school I attended and then worked at as an assistant principal. I wanted him to see the view of the city I woke up to every morning. I wanted him to see me—all of me—and I wanted him to say that we weren’t that different.

Ugh! Even after being with him for three and a half years, building a life and a home with him, I couldn’t shake the feeling that once he knew me—really knew me—he would decide that we couldn’t be together. We had grown up in different worlds. There was no denying that.

I grew up in a penthouse overlooking Central Park, the famous son of a wealthy, influential family. We vacationed in the Bahamas on our own private island. Cage grew up in the backwoods of Tennessee. His closest neighbor was two miles away, and it wasn’t because his family owned an estate.

Cage had lived in a small cabin with a man who had kidnapped him from the hospital—seemingly at the request of his biological father. The details of why his life ended up the way it did are still unknown. But what is unquestionable is that Cage is a small town country boy through and through.

I loved that about him: the quick smile, the warmth he showed everyone. He treated his students like they were all his little brothers. He cared about people. And he cared about me—I never had to doubt that. He showed it every day.

Unable to keep my hands off him any longer, I leaned down and kissed his cheek. With that, my prince awoke. As his eyes gently opened, I whispered,

“Morning.”

Cage closed his eyes and smiled. “Morning,” his deeply raspy voice grumbled back.

“I need to get ready for work,” I told him, hoping it would inspire a few ideas.

“Yeah,” he said, reaching out and clutching my waist in his large football player hands.

“Yeah,” I said, having already prepared for anything that could happen.

He pulled me onto him, and I felt what I was hoping for. There was no mistaking it when my boyfriend was excited. I had missed him for the past three weeks and there was a lot to miss. But now here he was again, and the feeling of him pressed against me made my body quiver with pleasure.

After all this time, I still couldn’t wait to have him inside me—his tongue, his finger, all of him. I felt incomplete when we were apart, and feeling him enter me was like becoming whole.

Needing him, I leaned in and kissed his lips. I was telling him what I needed.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” Cage said, eyes still closed and a broad smile on his face.

I kissed him again, letting him know that I wasn’t playing around. That was all it took. Leaning in for my kiss, he slid his hand onto my ass. Yep, I was already naked—like I said, I’d had time to prepare.