Necklaces.
Bracelets.
Earrings.
Each piece catches the morning light and fractures it, scattering sharp fragments of brilliance across the room.
My breath leaves me as I look back to Trey, confusion and disbelief tangling together inside my chest.
He is watching me carefully, his expression softened by something almost shy, a faint flush visible high on his cheeks.
“I wanted you to choose,” he says quietly.
The words settle deep inside me, heavy with meaning.
My hand lifts instinctively to the space where my wedding ring should be. My fingers brush bare skin. Gideon stripped all my jewelry from me the night he took me and Trey, like he could erase the truth simply by erasing the symbols.
Emotion tightens my throat, making it difficult to breathe.
The woman steps forward with a warm, professional smile, gesturing gracefully toward the display as she begins to explain the rarity of the stones, her voice smooth and practiced as she describes flawless clarity and exceptional cuts, but her words blur together, because I am still trying to understand how Trey could have thought to arranged this so fast. I move closer, drawn in by their beauty.
I feel him move behind, his arms sliding around my waist as he draws me gently back against his chest, his presence solid.
“They’re just options,” he murmurs softly near my ear. “You don’t have to choose anything except what you love.”
Before I can respond, Chace appears beside us with the casual curiosity of someone who has absolutely no intention of respecting the intimacy of the moment, his gaze sweeping over the display with open fascination.
“Well,” he says, folding his arms as he leans slightly closer, “this is easily the most terrifying table I’ve ever seen.”
Despite everything, a small, helpless laugh escapes me.
He gestures toward one of the larger stones. “You could blind someone with that. Permanently.”
Trey exhales a quiet sigh against my shoulder, his hand tightening faintly at my waist. “You’re not helping.”
“I’m helping by offering perspective,” Chace replies calmly, already reaching for a different ring before the jeweler smoothly intercepts him with polite horror.
My attention drifts across the display, overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices, until one ring catches and holds my gaze.
It is not the largest, nor the most ostentatious, but there is something about its elegance that draws me in.
My eyes linger on it too scared to pick it up.
“This one,” the woman says gently, recognizing my hesitation, her voice lowering as though the ring itself might hear her and turn shy beneath too much attention, “is an exceptionally rare stone. Its cut was designed to preserve both brilliance and softness.”
She lifts the ring with careful fingers and turns it so the light can find it properly, and when it does, the diamond does not flash the way the others do, does not fracture the light into sharp, blinding pieces, but gathers it instead, holds it, breathes it back out in something quieter.
It is not white.
Not exactly.
There is color inside it.
Faint.
Whisper-faint.
A blush of warmth that lives deep in the heart of the stone, like the last echo of sunset caught and kept.
