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  “Dammit, Kim, I’m trying to propose!” he half shouted, half laughed. That quickly got my attention, and my head snapped up to him from the floor. I swore my jaw hit the floor. “Only you, Kim, only you.” He chuckled lightly. “Why did I ever imagine this would be easy?”

  “Are you messing with me?” I asked, not completely believing my eyes and ears.

  “Yes, this ring, yeah, it’s fake, I just wanted to see your reaction.” He laughed. “And I have to say that this little dance you were doing was quite adorable.”

  “Oh, shut up. You’re the idiot who told me there was something on the floor.” I smiled, not really upset with him.

  “I needed a way to get down here without you figuring it out.”

  “Well, it worked,” I responded wryly.

  “So is that a yes?” he asked, still down on one knee.

  “I’m sorry. I was a little busy thinking we were about to die. What was the question?” I smirked.

  “God, I love you,” he hooted. “You know what? This is absolutely us. And you know what else is us? I’m not asking you. I’m demanding that you marry me, Kim. Allow me to be a part of the crazy that is you for the rest of my life. Let me laugh with you every day. Permit me to show you that the fun never stops with us. That I’ll love you with a smile on my lips until I can no longer smile. Marry me, Kim. Make me even happier than I am now and say you’ll be my wife.”

  “Who can deny a request like that?” I cheekily replied before sitting down on his one bent leg and kissing him with all the passion I had in me. When our lips pulled apart after minutes, definitely minutes, I finally whispered, “Yes, of course, I’ll marry you.”

  Brent put the ring on my finger and enveloped me in a hug before placing tender kisses on my face, jaw, and neck. It was the happiest day of my life until my wedding. And I am happy to say that somehow I made it through that day without any of my typical Kim mishaps. Yes, they have a name. I don’t know how, but it went by with only minimal issues. It could have been that I just didn’t care to notice any problems because I was too darn happy to be marrying Brent. We went to Fiji for our honeymoon and spent a week in pure bliss. And every day just gets better and better. I’m truly lucky to have found my own brand of book boyfriend, and I was glad I got to witness my two other best friends get their happily ever as well. Life has turned out great.

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  Other Books by DC Renee

  Please visit your favorite ebook retailer to discover other books by DC Renee.

  Let Go Series:

  Let Me Go

  Stand Alone & Sequel to Let Me Go: Let It Go (Benny’s Story)

  A Brutal Betrayal

  Coming Soon: Three Loving Words

  Excerpt from Let Me Go

  His accuser. All he had to keep him company for the last six years was her name and a vague image in his mind; those details had been seared into his mind for him to mull over. He never got to see the realization dawn on her face when she comprehended that she had picked out the wrong guy. He wasn’t even sure if what she accused him of had truly happened to her. Whether she had gotten the wrong guy or had just focused on him and lied. He had a feeling it was the latter. And it was that gut feeling that burrowed its way into the depths of his soul and stewed there, waiting to erupt, waiting for the chance to explode.

  And now that chance was about to present itself. He had planned it all perfectly. Finalized the details with precision, thinking of every little thing that could go wrong. But, then again, that was what he had done in his former life. He had been a doctor, one of the best. He graduated from Harvard at the top of his class, became one of the youngest doctors to lead a department, and went on to lead several departments. He was skilled; it was like second nature to him. The body was like a puzzle, waiting to be put back together, and he was a master at puzzles.

  He was good looking, six feet tall with shockingly black hair that he always kept short but messy, deep green eyes, straight nose, strong jawline, and even perfect teeth, thanks to braces in junior high. He knew he was a looker and always used that to his advantage.

  He had never had time for relationships, but he definitely loved the company of women. Lots of women. He never took advantage of a woman; his looks got him whatever he wanted or needed. He justified his actions because he was always up-front about the fact that he wasn’t looking for more than just sex. It didn’t stop some women from calling him every name in the book. So his womanizing reputation preceded him, but he didn’t care. He had a fantastic home in an upscale neighborhood and the respect of all his peers and friends. His parents, unfortunately, had died in a car accident while he was still in college, but he knew they were smiling down on him with pride. They had been wealthy, coming from “old money” that he had inherited, but his career also helped increase his worth. He was on top of the world until, one night after a thirty-six hour shift, he was awoken from his much needed sleep after only hours of snoozing by loud knocking on his door.

  Rape. One damn word changed his life.

  He was accused of rape. He lived alone, had no good alibi, and somehow his hair was found on the victim. How it got there, he could only guess. She had positively identified him from one of those line-ups like they show on the television. The prosecution had a flimsy case, but it seemed like the jury was hell-bent on convicting the good-looking, hard-working doctor. His memory of what she looked like was fuzzy at best, but that was probably his own imagination as the entire trial was a blur. His mind was reeling the entire time at the realization of his situation. He had the finest lawyers defending him and his sanity, spending an absurd amount of money. But in the end it wasn’t enough, he was still convicted of rape. Something he couldn’t ever fathom coming close to doing. He had seen the ugliness of such a crime numerous times in the hospital, and it left a person with not just physical scars but mental ones as well. The trial and subsequent prison time had left him with mental and physical scars of his own.

  He was sentenced to twelve years, and all appeals were denied. He only served five years, getting out a year ago on good behavior. When he went to prison, he was a normal, sane person, never capable of truly hurting someone. But spending five years in prison, while being labeled a rapist, was enough to make anyone crack. The scars he now wore were the same as those he had seen in the hospital, both physical and mental. Inmates aren’t too keen on rapists, especially pretty-boy ones. And he learned that the hard way.

  During that time in prison, he held onto the name of his accuser and that blurry image of her, his hatred increasing with each passing day and each brutal violation to his own body. She did this to him. And now she was going to know what it was like to have her life stripped from her and humiliated every day. Now, a year after his release, he was ready to make his move. Mason Tredwell was ready to find Kat Gingham.

  Excerpt from Let It Go

  Your brother. The words still echoed in Benny’s mind after all these years. Not like he could forget his brother, but that wasn’t what he was trying to forget. Most days he was happy...not exactly content with his life, but satisfied with where he was in relation to where he could have been. But it was days when he had to do something his not-quite hardened heart didn’t approve of that had him thinking of the words he received that day. “Benny, man, I’m sorry…your brother.” Today had been one of those shitty days.

  Only a few of Benny’s closest friends knew exactly what he had done. John, Chain, and Marco had been with him almost since the beginning. Marco was still in jail, but that was his own fault and for something that had nothing to do with Benny, so he didn’t feel bad. The guy had been having an affair with the wife of a cop. Benny had told him numerous times that it wasn’t a good idea, but the guy didn’t listen. One thing led to another and the cop found out, pulled some dirty shit, and Marco was in jail for a whole slew of crimes that he didn’t commit. However, John and Chain being behind bars was his fault. Well, not quite, but Benny had been busted with possession of a concealed
and unregistered weapon. And seeing as that hadn’t been his first time or even one of the first few times, he was going behind bars for a while. John and Chain were just loyal; a few punches to defend Benny, and the next thing you know, they had assault added to a few other crimes. His time in prison was all right, though. He had met Mason, the doctor who had saved him years before. He didn’t really owe him anything when he figured out who he was and what was happening to him. After all, Mason was a doctor at the time and saving Benny was just doing his job, but something about Mason reminded him of Ethan. And that was enough to spurn Benny into action to protect him, to befriend him, and to be there for him.

  Mason was now one of his best friends, but even he wasn’t one hundred percent sure about what Benny did. He probably thought it had to do with drugs or something you’d find straight out of a mafia movie. No, it wasn’t like that at all. Benny had started with a small time gang when he was sixteen. It was not as if he lived in a bad neighborhood, not truly, or that he had a bad relationship with his parents, or even that he needed the money. His family was great, loving, cared for one another, but Benny just didn’t feel settled. He was anxious all the time and didn’t like his friends at school. In fact, he hated school. He was restless all the time and started looking for a way to feel connected to the world. At first, he became an adrenaline junkie, looking for new ways to get a momentary rush, but that always lasted only a few minutes. Then he turned to drugs, but that wasn’t what he expected, either, because when he would come down from a high, he was right back where he started. He needed to feel on top of the world, so he got in with the wrong crowd, and the next thing you knew, he was a full-fledged gang member. He hated it and loved it at the same time. He hated what he did, hated the beatings he had to give, the dealing he started doing, the way everyone always had to watch their backs, but he loved the feeling of power that came with it.

  Everything was fine for a few years or as much as it could have been. His family life had started falling apart. His parents did everything they could to get him out. They were disappointed in him, tried to make him change, and they even threatened him, but when that didn’t work, they gave up on him. They figured that he was a lost cause, but they didn’t want Ethan going down the same path. They had been right to feel that way.

  “When you start acting like the boy we raised, you can come back,” his dad had told him as his mom cried. It didn’t matter because Benny had his own place by then. Benny sort of always knew that this was a phase, one of those “typical” teenage rebellion type things, and that when he grew out of it, he assumed that he’d be able to fix his relationship with his parents. He never got that chance.

  The thing he also didn’t realize was that once you’re in, it’s really hard to get out. He was working on it, trying to figure out how to make his way back to the “good” realm of life, but he never had a chance to do it. He never had a chance to make up with his parents, and he never watched his brother become something he wasn’t.

  He had been close to Ethan, always. They had their own issues and their own fights, but at the end of the day, Benny was Ethan’s big brother and watched out for him. Except when he decided to join a gang. That had been one of the most selfish moments of Benny’s life. He knew Ethan looked up to him and would want to be everything Benny was, but Benny had been too blinded by his need for power to even think about that. So, when Ethan came to Benny a couple of years later, asking to help him join, Benny should have done more. He should have figured out a way to walk away sooner, ran away even if he had to, but Benny had been in the thick of things then and had only told Ethan to stay away.

  When Ethan kept insisting that he wanted to follow in Benny’s footsteps, Benny finally had to sit down and talk with him.

  “I don’t want this life for you,” Benny had told him.

  “That’s my decision,” argued Ethan.

  “Actually, no, it’s not. If I say you’re not in, you’re not in. Got it?”

  “Why is it okay for you to be a part of it?”

  “Because I’m stupid,” Benny admitted. “Because I’m not good like you. You’re a great kid, E, and I don’t want you getting involved in this mess.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “E, you’re not fucking listening to me,” Benny had yelled. “I don’t want you to be a part of this shit. It’s not a good life; it’s not the right life. You like school, you’re getting good grades, and you’re going to do something amazing with your life.”

  “I see the way the guys look up to you, the kind of power you have over them. I want that, Benny. Why do you have to control everything? Why can’t you let me have some of that, too?”

  “You see only what you want to see!” Benny roared. “It’s not all fucking peaches and cream, E! I’m telling you, stay the fuck away from this shit! No brother of mine is going to be involved in this crap. Do you hear me? Do you fucking hear me?” Benny’s voice had been so loud that he was pretty sure the entire neighborhood had heard him. But even after Ethan nodded, there was something in his eyes that made Benny think he was the only one who hadn’t heard him after all.

  He should have paid more attention to that; he should have relied on his instinct and made sure Ethan didn’t get into trouble. But once again, Benny was too consumed by the rush that he was getting with the gang.

  And then he got a call from John. “Benny, man, I’m sorry…your brother…” John’s voice had trailed off, but the pain he heard in his friend’s voice was enough to break Benny’s heart. He had known, somehow. He had known that Ethan wasn’t just in trouble or hurt; he was gone.

  It took John, Chain, and Marco to subdue him after he terrorized his place, breaking everything in sight. His fists were bleeding, his eyes stung from the unshed tears, and his heart throbbed, willing itself to explode within his body.

  Ethan had wanted to prove to Benny that he could be just like him, could make something of himself in that fashion. He thought that if Benny wasn’t going to help him, he’d figure out a way to do it on his own. He went to another smaller gang and asked to join. They laughed in his face at first, but he was persistent, something Benny had loved about him until that point. They finally agreed when they found out that Benny was a member of a rival gang and was his brother. They wanted to use Ethan to get to Benny and then to the gang that he belonged to. They sent Ethan after some drug dealer in Benny’s gang, but Ethan wasn’t cut out for that kind of life. One thing led to another and they shot Ethan, in cold blood, like he was nothing. Like his life didn’t mean anything.

  It took two bottles of vodka shared among himself and his friends to get Benny to finally calm down. It didn’t stop him from getting revenge on the assholes who not only shot his brother but the ones who set him up for failure in the first place. John, Chain, and Marco helped him dish out retribution for Ethan’s death the very next day while their minds were still fuzzy from the alcohol they had consumed the night before.

  That was the day that changed Benny. He no longer wanted to get out of the gang. He wanted to build his own and run the two who had killed his brother to the ground. He wanted the people not entirely involved to pay for his brother’s death, even though, deep down, he knew it was his fault. He, and only he, was solely responsible for putting his brother in the ground. If he hadn’t been thinking of only himself, Ethan would never have gotten into that situation. If he had stepped away sooner, Ethan wouldn’t have wanted that kind of life. It felt almost ironic that in order to get the justice he craved to tamper his own guilt, he needed to burrow deeper into the life he had wanted to get out of.

  He watched as his brother was lowered into the ground three days later, his parents an inconsolable mess. He had tried to come home and share in the sorrow and misery with his parents, but they wouldn’t let him in. He figured it was their grief preventing them from taking comfort in their only remaining son, so he gave them the space they needed, even though it cut him deeply. When he walked up to his mother at Etha
n’s graveside, his assumptions were proven wrong.

  “You’re a murderer!” his mother screamed. “My baby is dead because of you!”

  He was speechless, shocked into silence. She was right, but he didn’t expect her to believe it, too. He was her son, after all.

  “You don’t deserve to grieve his death the way we do,” she choked on her sobs. “We warned you, but you didn’t care. You did this,” she hissed. “You threw away our love, you threw away your family, and now you have no one left.” Her words were said with a bitter edge that cut right through Benny. “Leave!” she screamed. “I don’t know you anymore; you’re not my son! My only son is dead, and you…you’re nothing.”

  “I think it’s best if you left,” his dad added, pity marring his features. That broke Benny in a way that he couldn’t describe. He had lost both his beloved brother and his parents in one day. And he had no one to blame but himself.

  With nothing left to lose, his blood boiling for redemption and his life in shambles, Benny built his empire, so to speak, very quickly. His heart had found walls around itself where there used to be none, and he took no mercy when taking his opposition out. That was not to say that he hadn’t had his fair share of punches. He had been in the hospital with knife wounds, gunshot wounds, and a number of other issues over the years. Ironically, the worst injury inflicted on him was a wrong place, wrong time situation. He had been leaving a club and managed to walk out right when some guy pulled a gun on a different guy he had been fighting with. Benny’s arrival surprised the guy, who clearly hadn’t ever used a gun before, and he shot him in the stomach instead of the would-be victim. That was when Mason had saved his life.