And then he whispered against my lips, “Take off your rings.”
I blinked up at him, dazed. “What?”
His thumb brushed the underside of my chin, tilting my face up until my eyes met his. There was nothing teasing in his expression. Nothing careless.
Just depth and intention.
“Mrs. Fraser,” he murmured, almost reverent, almost sinful, “I’m asking you nicely to take off your rings.”
A confused laugh caught in my throat. “Callum, what are you?—”
“Trust me,” he said softly.
My fingers trembled as I slid my wedding band and engagement ring from my hand. The sudden absence of their weight felt wrong, like I’d stepped out of my own skin. I didn’t like it.
He took only the band from my palm. For a moment he just held it between his fingers, turning it slowly beneath the warm glow of the bedside lamp, platinum and diamonds catching light.
Then he angled it toward me.
“There,” he said quietly.
I leaned closer, squinting through the sheen of gathering tears.
At first I saw nothing. Then the light hit just right. Tiny, precise, and etched into the inner curve of the band I had worn every day since we eloped. A secret pressed against my skin for months without my knowing.
Two words.
Since Spa.
My breath left me in a broken sound.
Since Spa.
Since the day he saw me. Since the day he wrote about me. Since the moment a seventeen-year-old boy looked at a teenage girl and somehow saw the future of the sport. Sawme.
“You…” My voice cracked. “You did this before we got married.”
He nodded once, eyes glassy but steady on my reaction. “Before the rings ever touched our hands.”
Tears blurred the engraving until the words swam.
“I wanted something that was just ours,” he said. “Something that started before we knew where any of this would go. Before titles. Before headlines. Before anyone else got a say.”
My lips trembled. “I’ve been wearing this the whole time.”
His mouth curved in the softest, most wrecked smile. “You’ve been carrying that moment with you every day. You just didn’t know it yet.”
A sob slipped free, quiet and helpless and full of wonder. My shoulders shook, tears falling freely. “Callum…”
He slid the rings back onto my finger with careful, trembling hands. His thumb lingered over the diamond of my engagement ring as if sealing a vow all over again.
“Since Spa,” he whispered. “Since the first time I saw you and knew the world was about to change.”
I shook my head, laughing through tears. “You ridiculous, hopelessly romantic, sentimental man.”
“And you married me anyway,” he teased with a smile so big it revealed that dimple I loved so goddamn much.
I surged forward and kissed him, wet cheeks, broken breaths, the taste of salt and warmth and forever between us.
