“How you gon tell me to chill when you?—”
“Shhh,” he shushed, grabbing my trembling hand.
He brought it up to his lips and kissed the back of it. After releasing it, he opened the ring box and showed me what was inside. I gasped and my eyes widened. It was a diamond ring. Not too big. Just right. A small nugget sat daintily on top, sparkling.
“I’m not asking you to marry me, Mo. Breathe.”
I exhaled and a slow smile crept upon my face. “Then… what?”
He ran his tongue over his bottom lip and raised his brows. “You asked me to be patient. I’ve been patient. But baby…” He shook his head with a pause. “My patience running thin as fuck now.”
I laughed and looked up at the ceiling before down at him again.
“I love what we have going on but I can’t spend another dayjustbeing your friend. That’s not enough for me. Honestly, it’s never been enough but because I understood where you were coming from, I gave you patience and I sat… waiting for the perfect moment in time to do this. But then I realized there was no perfect moment. I’ve had this ring for a minute. I’ve had this in me for a while, Mo. Since the day I saw you I wanted you. I have you but not in the way I need you. Feel me? I’m not asking you to marry me.” He paused and smirked. “Not yet. But I am asking you to be my lady.”
My heart raced.
He was asking me to be his lady.
How ironic. I was just thinking about how we’d been doing this thing without a title for a minute now, thinking I would have to be the one to mention moving things forward. God probably knew that if it were left up to me, I would never do it. I giggled to myself, thinking about how funny He worked. He’d been moving things around in my life like this for a minute now. I thought it was pretty funny. It was almost as if all of this time He’d been pushing me towards what I wanted. What Ideserved.
“You thinkin’,” Crescent said.
“That’s what people do. They think.”
“You know I get nervous when you?—
“Shhh.” Stepping forward a little, I cupped his face with my hands and leaned in, placing my lips on his. Softly, I kissed him and those fireworks I was familiar with, went wild. “Yes, Crescent. I’ll be your lady.”
Was I nervous? Of course. Did I have a tinge of anxiety about stepping into something new? Yeah. It was there. That was expected. Although there was a bit of anxiety, taking this step felt right.
“A promise ring,” he said, as he slowly slid it on my ring finger. “It might be a little childish but fuck it. I never gave a fuck about how something looked when it came to you. With this ring I promise to take care of you. Honor you. Protect you.” He paused and locked eyes with me. “And love you.”
I was a little choked up. I didn't think this was possible for me. Being with Crescent felt like a fairytale. Everything since we reconnected felt like a dream. If he wasn’t holding my hand, I would have pinched the inside of my arm.
I was thirty-five, divorced, with four children.When this thing started between Crescent and I, I thought he just looked at me as an easy married woman. I thought he just looked at me like the men at Pandora’s—like a piece of meat. Never in a million years did I think we would end up here. Not only becauseof the things I said but because this… it just didn’t seem feasible for someone like me. I had been exposed to so much pain and deceit that I thought that was it for me. When I filed for divorce with Duke, I didn't see things going like this. I thought I would have a ton of lonely nights and that I would die alone. I thought Duke was the end all, be all for me.
But Crescent showed me so much. He showed me I could indeed fall without worry. He showed me a man who was true to his word and serious about me. Someone serious aboutme? Who would have thought it?
My mind wandered a bit, as I stared at him. Would this had been a thing if he knew the truth? If he knew we met at Pandora’s? If he knew I slept with Judah? That secret was still a little heavy to carry but I rarely ever thought about it. Today though, with him standing before me, making promises, it just came up. My heart raced a bit and the tears I was choked up on before came to surface. Why in the world was I thinking about that?
None of that mattered.
Judah and Pandora’s were dirt under the rug. What we would have or wouldn’t have been because of it didn’t matter. What mattered was the present and that was a chapter of my life that was done and over with. I was in the now. With him, on one knee, asking me to be his lady. That was the only thing that mattered.
Once the ring was on my finger, I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him. With my eyes closed, I thanked God for putting us back together. Sometimes I wondered if I manifested him. Sometimes I thought about that red string theory. I still did that. Overthought. Overanalyzed. But that was just me. Overthinking and overanalyzing didn’t last long with him though. Not anymore. Crescent didn’t give me a reason tobe in my head. He didn’t give me a reason to question anything. And to be honest, he never really did.
He stood and pressed his lips against mine before gripping the bottom of my ass, lifting me from my feet.
“We good, y’all. Lock up on the way out,” Crescent said to the servers as he carried me upstairs to the bedroom.
I fell into a fit of giggles when he started to pour kisses down on my neck.
Hours later, I laid ass naked on his chest, wide awake. We were supposed to have a candlelit dinner, but it was canceled. Not because we didn’t want to go, but because we were busy feasting on each other. We went about three rounds—I lost count. But I knew we hadn’t left the room since he carried me to it.
Crescent was knocked on, snoring in my ear with his arm wrapped around me. I should have been asleep, but I couldn’t keep my eyes on the plastic bag sitting on the dresser a couple of feet away. With a deep breath, I looked up at him and slowly peeled his arm from around me to get out of bed. Slowly, I slithered off his body and sat on side of the bed when I did. With my fists pressed into the soft mattress, I looked over at the bag again. I held my breath, watching it with wide eyes.
Get up, I willed myself.
