The kitchen goes quiet as Amos sets his phone down slowly. Dominic stares at me across the table with an expression I can't read even through the bond.
"I know it's stupid. I know the bond is permanent and the baby is permanent and legally I'm your mate. I know all of that. But I spent twenty-six years being told I was temporary, a placement, a tool that gets used and returned." My throat closes. "I need someone to ask me to stay, not assume it."
Dominic pushes his chair back from the table and stands. He walks out of the kitchen and my stomach drops.
"Great." I mutter it at my linguine. "Excellent communication skills, Mattaniah. Really nailed that one."
Amos reaches across the table and covers my hand with his, his thumb tracing my knuckle but he doesn't speak. Dominic comes back into the kitchen. His hand slams down on the table beside my plate hard enough that the water glasses rattle. I flinch before I register what's beneath his palm.
A small, black ring box sits on the kitchen table beneath Dominic's palm.
"Is this better?" He lifts his hand and the box sits between my plate and the water glass, dented at one corner from the impact. "Is this enough of an ask?"
I stare at the box. My hand is still in Amos' across the table and I'm holding a fork with chicken on it. The baby chooses this exact moment to kick me in the bladder.
"You've been carrying that."
"For three weeks." He drops back into his chair. "I've been waiting for the right moment and there hasn't been one because every time I think the timing is right you say something that proves it's been wrong."
"You've had a ring in your pocket for three weeks." I set the fork down.
"Open it." His jaw is set.
The ring is a simple white gold band with no stone. The inside is engraved but the lettering is too small to read in the kitchen light.
"What does it say?" I hold the ring up.
"It says 'firefly.'" Dominic's voice has gone rough. His scent is filling the kitchen, leather and smoke so thick I can taste it, and underneath the smoke there's something raw I've never smelled from him before. "Because that's what you are. I'm not asking you to stay, firefly. I'm telling you that I want you to stay. This apartment and whatever comes after it belongs to you as much as it belongs to me or Amos. The bond and the baby aren't why you're here. You're here because I chose you and I choose you every day. Put that ring on your finger so I can stop carrying it around like a coward."
My eyes blur with happy tears as I stare at the metal. I don’t know why I needed to hear those words and I have no idea why I end up blurting out the next. "I'm not wearing a dress." The words come out through the tears and a laugh that surprises all three of us.
"Nobody asked you to wear a dress." Dominic's mouth twitches.
"I'll wear it." Amos' hand shoots up from across the table. "The dress. I'll wear the dress. I look excellent in formal wear."
The laughter breaks through the tears and the tension. The kitchen fills with something loud and graceless and punctuated by hiccups because I'm crying and laughing at the same time and Amos is miming a fashion pose from across the table.
"Put the ring on." He commands and then he clears his voice, softening his tone as he says it a second time. “Put it on.”
"You're proposing to me like you're closing a deal."
"I close every deal I make. Put the ring on."
I comply, loving how it feels against my skin. "You could have just asked." I hold up my hand and look at the ring. "You didn't have to slam it on the table like a subpoena."
"I've been trying to ask for three weeks. You kept changing the subject every time the conversation got close to commitment." He reaches across the table and turns my hand so the band catches the kitchen light. "I decided the table method was more efficient."
"Amos." I turn to look at him with my hand still in Dominic's. "Did you know about this?"
"I helped pick the ring." He pushes his glasses up. "I also wrote a statistical analysis of the optimal timing for the proposal based on your emotional patterns over the past eight weeks. Dominic ignored it."
"The analysis said to wait until after the birth." Dominic doesn't take his eyes off the ring on my finger. "I wasn't willing to wait."
"You wrote a statistical analysis for a proposal." I look between them. "You two are the most insane people I have ever bonded with."
"We're the only people you've ever bonded with." Amos stands from the table and crosses to my side. He kneels beside my chair and his hand rests on my stomach where the baby is still performing her bladder assault. "Niah. You are not temporary. You are not a tool. You are the person Dominic carried a ring for three weeks without sleeping properly and the person I wrote a seven-page analysis for." His hand presses against my stomach. "And the person growing our baby in my old sweatpants."
"Our daughter." The words are out before my brain has caught up and both of them go still.
