My knees nearly buckle under me.
“Who—who told you?” I breathe.
“Your grandmother,” he says. “Just now in her box.”
I sway a little, grabbing the back of a chair to help with the instant flash of vertigo.
“She told me everything,” he continues, stepping closer. “The bribe she offered me. The test. The fake divorce papers. How she used my dad’s trial spot against you. How she never intended for you to go to Moscow.”
Tears sting my eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What do you mean she never intended for me to go to Moscow?”
“She said she wanted to see how much we loved each other.” His voice drops lower. Warmer. “And we passed. Both of us.”
I let out a sound I didn’t mean to make… a broken, strangled thing.
“She’s not sending me back to Moscow?” I ask, hope blooming, but still fearful, this isn’t real. Could this all be a dream that I’m about to wake up from and find that I’m still alone in my grandmother’s penthouse. None of this feels possible
He shakes his head.
“I get to stay?”
“Yep. You proved that you love me enough to give up your freedom for my family.”I can’t believe my grandmother would do this… but then again, I can. She said she came to test our marriage. TO see how real it was.
“Do you still even want me?” I whisper. “After everything I said in that hallway?”
He reaches up and cups the side of my face, thumb brushing my cheekbone with unbearable tenderness.
“Yes,” he says simply. “I always did. I always will.”
And then, he lowers to one knee.
Right there on the dressing room floor, in his perfect suit, looking up at me like I’m the only thing he’s ever wanted.
“I didn’t get to propose the right way,” he says, pulling something out of his jacket pocket.
My ring.
The one I left behind.
I gasp and slap a hand over my mouth as he holds it up to me.
“But this feels like as good a chance as I’m ever going to get,” he murmurs. “And you can fix everything between us with a three-letter word.”
My heart is beating so hard I can hear it echoing.
His eyes stay locked on mine.
“Katerina Easton… the only woman I have ever loved in my entire life, and the woman I don’t want to live without,” he says, voice steady and full of something that steals my breath. “Will you stay married to me? And build a life with me? Whether it’s here in Seattle, or New York… or where life takes us next?”
I nod so hard I think I might give myself whiplash. “Yes, of course, I will stay married to you.”
He slides his ring back on my finger and stands, wrapping me up in his arms, and for once in the last week, I exhale, my heart feeling as though it refills in an instant.
“I thought I lost you,” I say, my voice cracking.
He pulls me tighter against his chest. “You never would have lost me. I would have figured it out. I would have come for you. To New York or Moscow. I would have brought you back home where you belong.”
Hearing him say that, I know that he’s telling me the truth. He would have come for me.
