“If that didn’t do the job, I’m happy to try again,” I say with a delirious smile.
She lets out a breathless laugh and places her hand on my cheek, gazing into my eyes.
“I don’t doubt you are,” she says, and she’s smiling too.
But it’s a soft smile, a fragile one, one that holds the weight of the world in it.
In the back of my mind I’m aware of the dangers outside this room, I know that we have to go after Brom in the morning and do what we can to convince him to not hand himself over to the Hessian, and I know that there’s so much we have to get through to get to our happily-ever-after, the one that includes the three of us and Kat pregnant with my child, and yet I want to cling to this moment with her for as long as I can.
“Kat,” I say to her, reaching down and gathering her hands in mine, my palms stinging slightly from the cuts.“My beautiful witch.I don’t know what the future holds in the morning, but I do know this.I want to be a father, and I want to be the father ofyourchildren.I want the house somewhere far, far away from here, where we can live, with Brom a part of this as much as you are, and I want it as soon as I can.”
I pause, taking in a shaky breath.“I want to marry you.”
She looks less surprised by this than she did about the baby.Her eyes soften at the corners, her sweet mouth lifting.“Are you asking?”she says, her tone both coy and shy.
I smile and press her hands against my lips.“Marry me, Kat.”
And it’s only then, after the question has been laid out in the open, raw and vulnerable, that I realize I’ve proposed to a woman who has never even said she loves me.
My jaw clenches as I prepare for the rejection.
But then she squeezes my hands.
“You know I love you, don’t you, Ichabod Crane?”she says.
I nearly collapse on top of her.
I shake my head, too afraid to let my heart swallow her words, so greedy for her love and affection.“I wouldn’t be going mad and losing my mind over you if I had that bit of information,” I admit.“But you could easily put me out of my misery.”
She lets out a light laugh, the kind of laugh that fools you into thinking everything will be okay.“I suppose that’s my fault, isn’t it?My brain has taken far too long to catch up to how my heart was already feeling.”
I raise my brows expectantly, waiting for her to say it.
“I love you,” she says earnestly.“I’m quite terribly in love with you.”
I exhale in relief and rest my head on her shoulder.She lets go of my hands and starts sweeping them down my back.“Even Brom knew,” she says.
I lift my head to peer at her, my heart skipping again and again.“Brom knew you were in love with me?”
She nods.“He did.And I told him I was afraid to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought you would ask me to marry you.Little did I know that you would do it anyway, on top of telling me that you want to get me pregnant.”
“You were afraid I was going to ask you to marry me?”I repeat.
Jesus, am I that predictable?
“Yes.Because I knew I’d say yes.”
“Well, that sounds terrible, saying yes to me.”
She grins at me.“You have no idea how consuming you are, Crane.Everything revolves around you, and I’m not even sure you realize it.Me, Brom, we’re caught in your orbit, no different from the stars in the sky.It’s impossible to stay away.It’s impossible to say no to you.”
“Do you want to say no to me?”
Kat shakes her head, sucking on her lower lip for a moment.“Never.”
