She didn't utter a word.
“I’m here, Olivia,” Kate implored.
Her throat tightened with stress. She couldn’t speak even if she tried, her mind seized and incoherent.
“I’m going to say this,” Kate said, in that mellow voice, the most wonderful in the world. The one she wanted to hear last thing at night, and first in the morning.
“I’m just going to say this, because it’s long overdue and I think you need to hear it.”
Kate held her hands and slowly became shorter. She blinked, trying to focus. Kate was kneeling.
“Oh!” Olivia cried out loud.
Because when she blinked and cleared her vision, she gazed down at Kate's hands to find a silver ring, with a gemstone the colour of her eyes.
“Oh,” she sobbed.
Her shaking legs betrayed her, and her knees gave way, and she descended to the ground.
Only then did she see the tears flooding Kate’s eyes and the smiles that flickered between distress and happiness.
“Olivia?”
Kate fumbled in her jacket pocket and brought out the velvet box, blue, although she swore it didn’t have gold italic writing on the lid before.
“Yes?”
Kate flipped open the lid. Why did she want to show her the empty...
“Oh,” she gasped.
A ring. More slender than the one she’d wrapped for Kate. Of gold and a beautiful dark gem, which shimmered in dark blues and black.
“Oh,” she repeated.
The only word her extensive vocabulary would allow right now.
Kate tilted her head, her lips trembling. “Will you marry me?”
And Olivia couldn't cope. She covered her face and her fingers instantly soaked with tears.
Chapter 14
Kate sniffed and hugged Olivia tight.
She didn't need an answer. They’d both asked the same question. And she held her wordless and sobbing. Kate happy. So happy. And at the same time, upset that Olivia had broken down, more than she’d ever seen, apart from when Zoe was born.
“Come here,” she whispered, kissing her forehead through a gap in her fingers.
Olivia’s hands slowly slid down, and Kate kissed her tears and cupped her cheek.
“I love you.”
Olivia wouldn’t look at her.
“I love you more than I can describe.”
Olivia sniffed.
