I smile through the heat in my throat.
He continues, “I want your cheekiness, your challenges, your impossible standards, and the way you look at a plate like it owes you the truth. I want your laptop on my island and your books onmy shelves and your office in the room with the best light, even if you insist on calling it an office when it was clearly a desk with ambition.”
“Itisan office.”
“It’s whatever you say it is,” he says, and that nearly breaks me more than the ring.
He draws in a breath.
“I love you more than I thought I was capable of loving anyone. More than is convenient. More than is sensible. More than I know what to do with on most days.”
I cover my mouth with one hand because the tears have finally reached the point where denying them would be ridiculous. He looks at me with that full, unbearable attention, the kind that has been undoing me from the first market stall.
“Marry me, Serena.”
There are many moments in a life when a person thinks she is choosing thenextthing and later realizes she was choosing everything. I think about a hotel window in Le Marais and the woman I was when I first looked out of it. I think about Rome, a phone facedown beside a plate, Ethan’s message going unanswered because my body already knew what my mind had not yet admitted. I think about tarragon at a market stall, a wine bar, a bridge at midnight, a desk in the morning light, four stars, cold coffee, hot kitchens, and a man who has never once asked me to be less honest so he could feel more comfortable.
I think about all the ways I used to be good at leaving. Then I look at Damien, and there is nothing left to analyze.
“Yes,” I say.
His eyes close for one fraction of a second. I say it again because once doesn’t feel like enough.
“Yes.”
He takes the ring from the box and slides it onto my finger with hands that are steady, though I know him well enough nowto see what the steadiness is costing. The diamond catches the spring light and throws it back across my hand. It looks like it belongs there, which is an astonishing thing for a piece of jewelry to decide without consulting me.
He stands. Then he pulls me off the barstool and kisses me in the middle of the kitchen, with the Seine beyond the windows, the stove still warm, my laptop open, and Paris below us going on with its usual refusal to make less of itself because something extraordinary is happening above it.
I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him back without trying to measure the moment. Not critically. Not carefully. Not with one part of myself standing aside to observe the rest. I am inside it entirely, and the relief of that is so complete I almost don’t recognize myself. When we finally pull apart, his forehead rests against mine.
“You didn't critique the ring,” he says.
“I’m still deciding whether to be generous.”
He laughs, low and real, the rare one, the one that means something has escaped him before he could make it dignified. It is still one of the finest things I have ever earned. I look down at my hand. Then at him. Then around the kitchen. His kitchen—Our kitchen.
I pull back slightly. “Five and a half,” I say.
“That is my final offer.”
His eyes narrow. “For the proposal?”
“For the timing, the ring, the legal paperwork phrasing, and the emotional risk.”
“Five and a half is insulting.”
“It is generous. You’re lucky I’m in love with you.”
“I am aware.”
“Good.”
His hands stay at my waist for a moment longer, and I let myself look at the ring without trying to turn it into a sentence.It’s there now, bright against my hand, startling only because it already looks like it belongs. Damien watches my face, and for once, I don’t offer him analysis. Some things don’t need to be reduced to language the second they happen. I glance toward the plate beside my laptop.
“I should finish that before it gets cold.”
“You just agreed to marry me,” he says.
