“This is the one,” I said, trying to hold back my grin. “She’ll love it.” I handed the ring back to Marcus, the one and only person I trusted to buy jewelry from.
“It’s a beautiful choice,” he said. “Classic. Timeless. And this diamond is flawless.”
“Good,” I said. “I’d expect nothing less for her.”
“I can have this ready in four weeks.”
“That’s perfect.”
He scribbled the details onto a piece of paper. “So how are you going to ask?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” I joked.
He laughed. “That’s what a man without a plan says.”
I chuckled. “I’m thinking of chartering a yacht for the night. Take it out into the harbor. Dinner. Candles. Dancing. The whole thing. I’m still working it out.”
He smiled. “Sounds like she won’t be able to say no.”
“That’s the hope,” I said. “We’re headed to Switzerland this month, where I plan to spoil the absolute shit out of her.”
Marcus looked at me. “She’s a lucky woman, Matt.”
“Yeah.” A smile tugged at my mouth. “I guess she is. But not nearly as lucky as I am to have her.”
A car honks its horn,whiplashing me back to the present as I cross the street.
Zurich’s nothing like Zermatt. It’s the opposite in every way. Where Zermatt is a place for reprieve, a quiet carless mountain town, Zurich is every bit the big city New York is. Traffic. Honking. Businessmen and women hustling to and from work.
Only it’s cleaner, more structured, and classier.
And it’s one of my favorite cities in the world.
I had meetings this morning with some of the investment partners and developers for the resort in Zermatt. They went well. Everything is on schedule and moving along.
I’ve been in my head a lot since yesterday morning. After Jordan and I talked over breakfast, things settled back into our normal…ish.
It was stiff for a couple hours. Fake. The kind of fake that comes from tension you try to shove through instead of actually dealing with. But after an hour in the car together, the air lightened. Her mood lifted, and so did mine. And we were right back to listening to her shitty music and holding hands like nothing ever happened.
It’s one of the things I love about her. For all the armor she wears for the world, she’s never stopped letting me cut straight through the bullshit exterior.
Sure, she avoids it at first. Comes in hot. Fists up. Guns blazing. She’s rarely the one coming to me, saying,Come on, let’s talk about this.
But when I push, when I bring up the hard stuff and force her into that uncomfortable place of vulnerability, she lets me. And she never holds it against me later.
She’s always been forgiving and understanding. Sometimes too much, a strength and a weakness. Especially when it comes to her family.
That’s what has me all fucked up today. I’ve been buried in memories. Replaying the past. Trying to pinpoint where things went wrong, and what the hell I could have done differently.
The last time we came to Switzerland, I was the happiest I’d ever been. We were stronger than ever. I thought that was it—that we’dbeen through every kind of challenge together, that we’d weathered the storm.
That finally, after everything, time was going to allow us to just… be.
Fuck, was I wrong.
Our first big breakup was when we were seventeen. Shit hit the fan with her dad. He’d just gone to prison, and everything got really ugly. It was heavy. Jordan had always been close to him. She idolized him growing up. He was one of the people she confided in, right up until she was about fifteen, when he started going down a dark path.
We’d been sitting in the cove at her pappoús’ place for what felt like hours. It was dark. Late. Quiet. She had cried in my arms until my shirt was damp. I didn’t say much, just listened. I held her, rubbed her back, wiped her tears, wishing I could trade places with her. Take it all away.
