“Six thirty. Secret Beach. Wear a dress. I know!” I say, repeating his instructions back to him.
He nods and then gives me a quick kiss on the cheek before putting his protective gloves back on.
“Okay, you can open your eyes now!” Declan unclasps his hands from my face.
We’re standing in the middle of Secret Beach, our favorite spot: feet in the sand with a perfect view of the horizon, the ginormous rocky cliff hugging us from behind. Everything about our secret place is the same, except this time, there’s a path lined by massive candles. It leads to a wreath of blue andwhite hydrangeas, with one red rose at the top. Lottie’s favorite flower.
“Declan,” I gasp, grabbing his shoulder. “What is this?”
He finally looks me in the eye, a hesitant smile tugging his lips. The freckle on his bottom lip spurs into action at the movement.
“Come on,” he breathes, voice so low I can barely hear it over the crash of the waves.
He leads me by the hand through the narrow, candle-lit path to the head of the flower display and turns to face me.
“Oh my goodness,” I cry. “What is happening!”
Declan smiles. Okay, I think I know what’s happening.
“Blair,” Declan says, reaching for my hands. “I’ve known since the day I met you that my greatest joy in life would be asking you to spend the rest of our days together. That was seventeen years ago, and I still feel just as excited to bend down on one knee today as I imagined I would then. Loving you has been the easiest thing I’ve ever done. It’s so easy that everything else feels arduous in comparison. Yes, arduous. I had to throw a big word in because I know you love those. And I’ll keep learning big words to impress you for the rest of our lives.”
I hear myself release a tearful laugh. As Declan’s determined eyes bore into mine, the wind and waves dim to a distant whirr. There is nothing else in the world but him right now.
“You have changed my life in too many ways to count. Even when I wasn’t physically near you all those years, every day, your presence was like a visceral grip around my heart, refusing to let go. And I won’t ever let it.” His hair whips across his forehead from the wind as he crouches down and reaches for something behind the wreath of flowers. I’m expecting to see a small box, but the pastel birdhouse he made me comesinto view instead. I gasp, clutching my mouth. And then he procures a small mallet.
“What is going on?” I murmur.
“When I gave you this birdhouse, I told you there was something inside,” Declan says, opening the pastel wooden door. “I hid something in here that I knew would come in handy for this very day.”
He reaches the mallet into the birdhouse and gently taps the front panel of the tiny box inside. It falls open, revealing a crumpled piece of paper and… a pebble?
“Years ago, on the high school football field, I jokingly called you a blue-footed booby. Do you remember that?” He raises his eyebrows in anticipation.
A shocked laugh escapes me. “Yes? Those birds with insanely blue feet?”
“Mm-hmm.” He nods with a look of satisfaction. “And I showed you the video of them offering a pebble to the bird they wanted to be their mate.” He reaches into the tiny inner room of the birdhouse and offers the pebble in his outstretched hand. “So, this is for you, my Little Bird.”
I throw my head back, laughing as the wind whips my hair into my mouth. I accept the smooth gray pebble from his hand.
“And this is too,” he says, removing the crumpled scrap of paper.
I take it from him with a shaking hand and unfurl it. Declan’s delicate handwriting comes into view:
“Will you marry me?”
It is scrawled in black ink, indented by the paper’s folds. By the depths of the creases, it looks like it’s been folded for years.
A tear falls from my face onto my shaking hands.
And when I look up, Declan is down on one knee, holding a diamond ring inside a velvet box.
“Here is the actual rock I would like to offer you,” he jokes with a sideways smile, freckle stretching with the movement. “Blair Lang, will you marry me?”
“Yes,” I cry, shaking my head. “Yes, Declan. Yes, yes, a million times yes.”
I could write novels about the smile that explodes across Declan’s face. And I probably will. Declan slides the ring onto my finger, exhaling a breath when it fits perfectly. He gathers me into his arms and lifts me off the sand. In my peripheral vision I see my mom, Roshi, Faye, Harper, and… Gwen, running toward us. Distant whoops and hollers echo off the rocky cliff from our tiny audience.
“Oh my gosh,” I cry at the sight of them. Declan sets me down for a moment, adjusts his grip on my waist, and then picks me up again and starts whipping me around in a circle like I’m as light as a rag doll. “Declan!” I screech. “You never would have known you were hit by a car with the way you throw me around,” I scream as the sand and sea swirl in my vision.
