I fidget under the full blast of his attention. “Should we go back…?” I venture.
He shakes his head. “Stay there a second.”
He reaches into his inside pocket, the same one the envelope for Caroline came out of. I assume, for an instant, that it’s another envelope. Maybe one for me.
It’s not.
It’s a small velvet box, one that has clearly been opened many, many times before, because the velvet at one corner is rubbed almost bare.
Just like that, I stop breathing.
Matvei lowers himself onto one knee. The knee of his suit pants is going to take an expensive hit. By the single-minded solemnity on his face, though, he doesn’t give a shit.
He looks up at me, his eyes that color, that impossible color.
Then he opens the box.
The ring inside is so unlike the four-carat emerald-cut diamond that used to weigh down my left hand that for a second my brain can’t even classify them as the same category of object.
This one is small. Old. Gold, gone soft and warm with wear.
A single stone in the middle, more cloudy than brilliant, more honey than ice. A tiny garland of leaves etched into the band.
“It was my mother’s,” he says quietly. “Afon brought it to me from a box of his things last month. He said he’d been holding it for me since she passed. He didn’t think it was the right time, before. He thought it might be now.”
I press my hand to my mouth, unable to speak.
“Cassandra.” Matvei takes a breath. “Do you remember what I said to you in an alley, the night I met you?”
I shake my head, not because I don’t remember, but because I want to hear him say it again.
“I said,” he goes on, “that no one can claim you for themselves in this world. Only you can choose to give yourself away. That’s still true.” His thumb runs over the worn velvet of the box. “No one will ever own you. Not him. Not me. Not anyone. But,dikarka—if you choose to give yourself away… then give yourself to me.”
From inside, muffled through the brick, cousin Sal’s Bluetooth speaker swaps Lizzo for an old Otis Redding song. The world, on cue, slows and quiets.
I drop into a crouch in front of him, knees bumping his knee, my hands cupped around his on top of the ring box.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, you beautiful blue-eyed bastard, yes, of course. Yes.”
He lets out a breath that sounds like he’s been holding it for a year.
He slides the ring onto my finger. Then I kiss him and he kisses me back. In the distant back of my head, it occurs to me that my meet-cute and proposal both took place in an alley.
Not exactly fairy tale stuff.
Then again, it kind of is.
Whatever you’d call it, I know Giana, wherever she is, is laughing her ass off. In fact, when the wind comes down the alleyway, I can almost hear her.
We straighten ourselves out as best we can. Matvei retucks his shirt. I pat my hair until I’m reasonably confident it does not look like I just had alley sex, although there is no mirror nearby to confirm that for me.
Even if I do look ratchet, I don’t give a damn. Let the wedding guests stare and whisper, or make jokes and call us silly names. The only name I care about anymore is the one Matvei gave me over a year ago.
Dikarka.
His wild little filly.
We slip back inside through the loading dock door. Dani and Chad have moved from the dance floor to one of the long picnic tables and are eating cake directly off each other’s forks, giggling madly. God, they’re so in love I can practically smell it. I couldn’t be happier for her.
