Internally, I set down a weapon I’ve been carrying for so long; I’ve gotten used to the weight. My life is still my life, but I can live with this man in my daughter’s life if it means I have a chance of repairing my relationship with her.
Elena’s hand finds my knee again, that little anchor. I look at my daughter and don’t try to fix anything, don’t try to buy anything, don’t try to argue the past.
For the length of a basket of salted potatoes in a casino bar, four people will share a table and talk about nothing important
And somehow, it feels like a start.
The elevator ride up feels longer than the one down, even though Elena spends it leaning into my side, her head tipped to my shoulder like the night finally caught up with her.
When the doors open, she yawns without hiding it, and I want to carry her the rest of the way, but she flicks my stomach with two fingers like she can read my mind.
Inside the room, she toes off her heels with small, relieved sounds that do something to me.
“Bed,” she declares, reaching for the zipper at the back of her dress. “Pillows, blanket, one thousand percent not my problem if I snore. And also—” She pauses to rub the arch of her foot. “—I’m calling down for more fries.”
“You already had half a basket,” I say.
“And?” She lifts an eyebrow, daring me. “She’s hungry. I’m hungry. We’re two separate people who both like salt.”
“Strong argument.” I’m smiling, I can feel it, and I let it live. “Order your salt.”
She pads toward the bed, stripping off earrings as she goes, jewelry leaving little bright spots on the nightstand. The zipper sighs; the dress loosens. She talks as she moves, the words soft and a little frenetic. “That could’ve gone so much worse,” she murmurs. “I know this isn’t everything, I do, but Luca, she laughed. Twice. And the fries—God, the fries helped.”
“The fries were instrumental,” I agree.
She bends to rummage in her overnight bag for a soft T-shirt, hair spilling forward. “I’m going to wash my face and then I am turning into a weighted blanket and you can’t stop me.”
“Understood.” I cross to the suitcase at the foot of the bed. My hands don’t shake, which surprises me; everything else does. I flip the latches, push past shirts I stacked like a man who needed to keep his mind busy, and find the small leather case tucked in a side pocket where I’ve touched it a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours just to be sure it was still there.
Behind me, water runs; the door clicks; the room smells suddenly of her soap. I stay where I am, kneel because if I try to stand with this in my hand, I might pace a trench in the carpet. The case is small enough to disappear in my palm. The weight of it is not.
“Elena,” I say.
She turns with a towel bunched at her chest, one shoulder bare, laughter still ghosting her mouth. The sight of me drops it clean out of her hands. It puddles at her feet, abandoned.
“What are you—” she starts, and then stops, because there’s only one thing a man like me does on one knee.
I open the case.
The ring isn’t gaudy in the way I used to think mattered. It’s relatively simple: a round cut stone, set in a platinum band, with more stones on the outside; I think they call them baguettes. Understated in a way I knew Elena would like, but elegant and classy, too.
“For a long time,” I say, “I believed the only good I could do for the people I loved was to keep my distance. To be better by being elsewhere. Then you walked into my life and ruined that strategy entirely.” I let out a breath; it feels like a confession.
Her eyes go glossy. She puts one palm flat to her sternum like she’s grounding herself.
“I love you,” I tell her, because that belongs here. “I love you when you’re making burnt offerings out of cookies, and when you’re arguing case law in my kitchen, and when I’m asleep and you’re counting my breaths. I love you when you’re brave, and I love you when you tell me you’re scared. I love you for insisting I hand over my monsters to the system you trust, even when I object. I love you for making me ask instead of assuming. I love you more and more every time that baby kicks.”
A wet laugh breaks out of her; she swipes at a tear with the back of her wrist. “She’s definitely your daughter.”
“She’ll be ours,” I correct, and my throat gets tight on that word, ours. “Elena, will you marry me?”
She doesn’t move for a heartbeat. Two. I watch the exact second she lets the decision she already made rise to the surface. Her hand comes to her mouth, her shoulders drop, and something like relief and joy and terror pass over her face all at once.
“Yes,” she says, the first time like a breath.
I don’t move. I want the second one. “Panini,” I murmur. “Are you sure about this?”
Her smile goes crooked. “Yes,” she says again, stronger. “Yes, Luca.”
