"Rye, this is your house—"
"It’s yours. Everything I have is yours. Every room. Whatever you want. No budget." His jaw sets. "And one room, whichever you want, gets rebuilt as a dance studio. Proper floor, proper barre, mirrors. Sound system. Somewhere you can move however you want. No one counting anything.”
I stare at him.
"And a ball pit," he adds. "If you want one."
Anna makes a sound that is half laugh, half sob. Jeremy has both hands over his mouth.
"You spent eighteen years being someone else's idea of perfect." He crosses to me in two steps, takes my face in both hands. "You get to be whoever you actually are. In whatever color you want the walls."
"Yes," I say. “I love that. I love you.”
"Good."
He kisses my forehead. Steps back. Reaches into his pocket and produces a small dark box, opens it without preamble, without kneeling, without any of the theatrics because that is not how Rye does anything.
The diamond catches the light and throws it across the ceiling like a small, quiet explosion.
Old cut. Simple band. Chosen with complete certainty and zero input from anyone.
"I'm not asking if you want this," he says. "I already know you do." The corner of his mouth ticks up. "But I'm asking anyway. Because you deserve that."
My face is wet before I can stop it.
"Marry me, Dautie." He clears his throat and tries again. “Will you marry me, Dautie? Be my little girl forever.”
Behind me, Anna makes a noise that constitutes a full physical event. Jeremy grabs her arm. Neither of them breathes.
I look at the ring. I look at him. That face I've had in my heart since I was old enough to understand what longing was has been a fixed point in every storm.
"You're impossible," I tell him.
"Yes."
"You justdecide—"
"Elodie." Warm and immovable. "Say yes."
I exhale.
"Obviously yes."
He slides the ring on before the word is finished. His arms come around me and I press my face into his chest and feel him exhale, the deep one that means he's right here with me.
Then Jeremy absolutely loses his mind.
He launches himself at both of us, drags Anna with him by the wrist, and for one chaotic coffee-spilling moment it's all four of us in the kitchen, Anna laughing into my hair, Jeremy announcing to no one in particular that hecalled it, he called it in the limo, history will vindicate him—
Rye endures all of it with his chin on top of my head and one arm still banded around my back.
I tilt my face up. He's watching me with that quiet, absolute look.
I hold up my left hand between us. The light scatters across the ceiling again, across his face, across the whole ordinary gorgeous wreckage of this crazy situation.
"No budget on the studio?" I ask.
"No budget on anything," he says.
