Even from across the room and without thoroughly investigating them, I put them as nineteenth century. And expensive.
I take a step toward them and a bark fills the air that nearly sends me flying out of my skin.
Frank plants his ass in the doorway and looks at me with a tilted head and judgmental pant.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I whisper-scold, eliciting another bark.
Any sane person would take a dog barking as a sign that this is a terrible idea, but I’ve accepted my sanity stayed in Fontain. Frank could lunge at me and start gnawing my leg and it wouldn’t stop me from seeing what’s in one of those nightstands.
I choose the one with a glass of water on top of it—it must be Nash’s side of the bed. I admire the pristine beauty of the table one last time before putting my fingers on the wooden knob.
Do not open it, Rue.
Do not open it.
Do. Not. Open. It.
I suck in a sharp breath ... and open it.
Two things register at once: A strip of unused condoms and a black-velvet ring box.
While the condoms make me want to vomit like the hypocrite that I am—I can have sex with Jonathan, but Nash absolutely should have been a celibate monk—it’s the ring box that shocks me like a toaster tossed in a bathtub.
Frank whimpers his judgment; I ignore him.
The war raging within me makes my hands fidget and legs bounce.
“I need to see what’s in that box.” I say it out loud because I really,reallyneed to see what’s in that box. Because if I don’t, I might die. “I’m looking in the box, Frank.” I swear the dog frowns. “Don’t look at me like that.”
Then I open the box, and once again, I can’t find the breath to breathe.
It’s an engagement ring.
Unlike the oversized solitaire diamond that sits on my finger and probably costs three times as much as the one I’m gaping at, it’s vintage. Art Deco in design. My mom knows jewelry better than me, but I’d say this is from the 1920s. The showcase stoneis an unassuming yet flawless pearl, surrounded on one side by a gold fan detail that reminds me of a sun ray, and on the other side by geometric diamond accents.
It’s unique, stunning, and disgustingly perfect.
And because I can’t not, I take it out of the box.
Cap wasn’t wrong about Nash being in love, he was just wrong about who with. Nothing says love like a band of glittery stones and gold, and this one says a whole lot of love. It consumes me with the most devastating form of jealousy I’ve ever known. Nash and I blasted into a marriage without rings and on a whim, but this go-around is as clearly different for him as it is for me.
“I’m happy for him,” I tell Frank and myself without looking away from the ring. “I love Jonathan.”
The dog whimpers a warning, like he knows what I’m about to do before I do.
I flip him off. I don’t care what he thinks, I have to know how this thing feels on my finger.
Once.
For a second.
Pulse blasting my eardrums, I take my own engagement ring off and drop it into my pocket, replacing it with the one I can’t stop looking at that wasn’t bought for me.
It’s tight, but it fits, and when I hold my hand out, emotion I have no right to feel crashes over me like a tidal wave. Nash is marrying someone else with this ring. She’ll wear it as long as she lives, then be buried with it, then it will live on her skeleton when she’s nothing but bones. I am so happy for her it burns my skin.
I need it off. Right the hell now.
I tug at it.
