“No,” I say. “Not nothing.”
His gaze flicks to the chair beside me. His jacket is draped over the back of it. I did not see him put it there. That bothers me for half a second because I do not typically miss things inside rooms I know well. Then I see his hand move toward the insidepocket, and the world narrows so quickly that my next breath does not arrive on time.
He takes out a small box: Black. Simple. Unmistakable. My body knows before my mind permits language. He comes around the island.
“Damien,” I say.
The sound of his name is different this time. He gets down on one knee on the kitchen floor of his Paris penthouse, in the kitchen he built before he knew I existed, with the Seine visible through the windows behind him and the city spread out gold and indifferent below. The plate he made me sits half-finished beside my laptop. My coffee is hot for once. The paragraph on my screen is still terrible. Everything is ordinary enough to make the extraordinary feel more dangerous.
He opens the box. The diamond is significant, brilliant, and simply set. Not delicate in a way that apologizes for itself. Not ornate in a way that begs for attention. It’s clean, luminous, exact. The kind of ring that understands it’s already right and doesn’t need help proving it.
I look at it and understand immediately that it’s exactly what I would have chosen. Which means he has been paying attention.
Of course he has.
Damien pays attention the way other people breathe: thoroughly, privately, without announcing the effort. He looks up at me, and his voice is quieter when he speaks.
“I know what you’re going to say about the ring,” he says.
“And I want you to know I do not care.”
I laugh once, but it catches. He does not smile—not yet.
“You’re going to say it’s too much,” he says.
“You’re going to say something about practicality, or ethics, or the relationship between proportion and taste, and you aregoing to be very convincing. I am asking you to say yes before you begin the critique.”
My eyes burn.
“I haven’t said anything,” I say.
“You are about to.”
“That is possible.”
“I know you,” he says.
The words land harder than the ring. I press my lips together because if I speak too soon, I will ruin the shape of whatever this moment is becoming. He sees that, and something in his face shifts. Less controlled now. Still Damien, still exact, still a man who would rather burn down a bad argument than let it stand, but exposed in a way he rarely allows himself to be.
“I want you to be my wife,” he says.
“I want you in this kitchen and in this city and in my life in a way that has paperwork attached to it, because apparently I have become a man who requires legal structure for the obvious.”
A sound leaves me that is almost a laugh and almost not.
“That is the mostyousentence anyone has ever said,” I whisper.
“I’m not finished.”
“Of course not.”
His mouth curves faintly, but his eyes stay locked on mine.
“I want to cook for you for the rest of my life, and I want you to tell me honestly whether it deserves five stars. I want to travel with you and argue with you in restaurants across the world while you pretend not to enjoy how often I’m right.”
“You’re not often right.”
“I’m right enough.”
