“You’re beautiful.” He kissed my nose. “You’re beautiful.” My left cheek. “You’re beautiful.” My right.
“You’re—” I shut him up with a real kiss, laughing against his mouth. “Your grandfather has created a monster.”
“He’ll be thrilled to hear it.”
We’d been in Santorini for three days and I still wasn’t used to it.
The white buildings looked painted on, like someone had carved them from sugar and prayed the rain wouldn’t come. Blue-domed churches appeared around every corner, each one more photogenic than the last. The narrow streets wound through villages in ways that made no logical sense, and we got lost at least twice a day.
I loved every second of it.
Michael found a tiny bookshop in Oia run by an elderly woman who spoke six languages and had opinions about all of them. He’d bought a battered collection of Greek philosophy that he insisted on reading to me each evening, despite not actually knowing Greek.
“That’s definitely not what Plato meant,” I said on our fourth evening, curled up on the balcony.
“How would you know? You don’t read Greek.”
“I don’t need to read Greek to know Plato wasn’t talking about really goodsouvlaki.”
He set down the book and pulled me onto his lap, the chair creaking under our combined weight.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.” But his expression shifted into something softer. More serious. “Just thinking.”
“Dangerous habit.”
“I know.” His hands found mine, fingers intertwining. “Claudette.”
The way he said my name made my stomach flutter. “Yeah?”
“I need to ask you something.”
My heart started beating faster. “Okay.”
He was quiet for a moment, then he spoke, “Vegas was real. You know that. Every word I said, every promise I made—I meant all of it.” He brought my hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to my knuckles. “But we were so scared that night. We were stealing time we didn’t think we had.”
“Michael—”
“Let me finish.” He took a breath. “I want to marry you again.”
The world went quiet in my ears.
“I want to stand somewhere beautiful with you and make promises we know we can keep. I want our families there.”
My eyes were burning. “You want to marry me again.”
“I want to marry you a hundred times. A thousand.” He cradled my face in his hands, wiping away tears I hadn’t realized were falling. “But right now, I’m asking for just one more. On that beach house in California. I want to stand in that place and promise you the rest of my life.”
I couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe.
“So.” His forehead dropped to mine. “Claudette Ashford… will you marry me? Again?”
I kissed him like he was the answer to every question I’d ever asked. The sunset blazed behind us and somewhere in the village a church bell rang and none of it mattered because he was here and I was here and we’d made it.
Six months ago, I’d been relearning how to walk. A year ago, I’d been dying.
Now I was planning a future I never thought I’d have, with a man who’d refused to let me go.
