He swallowed.
“This feels like me,” he said. “The me you see. I didn’t know how badly I wanted to know what that looked like.”
Her chest pulled tight. “I could do another one,” she said, half joking. “Something less dramatic. You on a stool in the shop, yelling at Brian about torque specs.”
“First of all, I don’t yell,” he said. “I passionately discuss.” He glanced at her. “Second, this is enough. More than.”
She stepped closer, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers.
“Good,” she said. “Because I planned on hanging this somewhere you can’t ignore it.”
“Like where?” he asked.
She considered. “House hallway,” she said. “Top of the stairs. So every time you leave, you remember who you are. And every time you come home, you remember what you’re walking back to.”
His breath hitched. He turned from the painting to her, really looking now.
“You want me in your hallway?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve already got you on my mortgage,” she said. “Kind of hard to walk that back.”
Something in his face softened, then set. Resolve, sure as any line he’d taken at ninety miles an hour.
He took a step back, just enough space to move. His hand went into his jeans pocket.
Her heart did something strange.
“Hank?” she asked.
“You remember when we sat in that awful plastic chair waiting for tech inspection,” he said. “Before any of this. When I told you I didn’t know how to want things that lasted.”
She did. It was burned into her memory, the smell of dry erase and gas, the way his voice had gone quiet.
“I remember,” she said.
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” he said. “Apparently, self-reflection is a side effect of zoning hearings.”
She snorted, but her pulse thudded hard against her ribs.
“I used to think wanting things was the dangerous part,” he went on. “If you didn’t want anything too much, you couldn’t lose it. Then you walked in front of me on the racetrack, in this tiny harbor town, and every theory I had went out the window.”
He pulled his hand from his pocket.
A small velvet box sat in his palm.
Her mouth went dry. “Hank,” she whispered.
He smiled, nervous and a little wild. “I thought about doing some big speech at the board meeting,” he said. “Or down at the harbor, with a sunset and at least three bystanders filming. But that felt wrong. This feels right.”
He went down on one knee on the drop cloth, between splatters of primer and coffee rings.
Her world narrowed to him; the curve of his shoulders, the way his fingers tightened around the box, the deep, steady look in his eyes.
“Aubree Spencer,” he said. “You’re the bravest person I know. You stayed when every part of you wanted to run. You took my chaotic life and somehow made it feel like it points somewhere. I want to spend the rest of my days building things with you. Walls, engines, whatever. I want to wake up in that creaky farmhouse and trip over your paint tubes on the way to the coffee maker.”
He opened the box.
The ring inside caught the light; a simple silver band, a round stone that wasn’t huge but sparkled like it meant it.
