Chloe's hand slid into mine. She squeezed once. She did not know yet. She thought we were going for caramel apples.
The carnival sat at the edge of a town green I had never bothered to learn the name of, half on grass and half on a stretch of fairground gravel. Lights had been strung between the booth posts in long warm loops, the kind that turned the air gold for ten feet under them. Hay bales had been pulled into rough seating around a fire pit that was actually lit, woodsmokedrifting low. A bluegrass band played by the cider tent with the kind of energy that said they had been at it for an hour and would be at it for two more. The Ferris wheel was small and lit at every spoke, turning slow against a sky gone the color of a bruised plum.
The smell of caramel hit me before we had cleared the parking line. Fried dough behind it. Cold air over the top of both, carrying the woodsmoke. My men were in the crowd at a distance, in coats and knit hats, looking like fathers who had brought children to a fairground. One of them was eating a candy apple. I almost laughed at him.
Rhea had Chloe by one hand and me by the other and she was pulling forward with a strength I did not know a body that size could generate. We hit the ring-toss booth first because she saw it first.
She tried six times. She missed six times. Her last toss bounced off the rim of a bottle and rolled back to her feet, and she stared at it as if it had personally betrayed her.
"Let me," I said.
I picked up three rings. I sank three rings. The man behind the booth raised his eyebrows in a way that suggested he had not seen that done sober in some time. He handed Rhea a small stuffed fox with one floppy ear, which she immediately introduced to Beom-Beom as a cousin.
"Did you just use bratva precision on a fairground game?" Chloe said.
"I used my arm."
"Your arm has bratva precision."
"My arm is just an arm."
"Daniil Sorokin. You just won a stuffed fox like a hit man."
The almost-smile came up before I could stop it. She caught it. She always caught it.
The caramel apple stand was three booths down. Chloe bit into hers and a long ribbon of caramel pulled and snapped, a piece of it catching at the corner of her mouth. I leaned in without thinking. I kissed it off. She tasted like sugar and the cold air.
Rhea made a noise from her stomach that was meant to be a gag. She did not actually leave. She bit into her own apple and chewed and watched us out of the corner of her eye like she was making sure we were not going to do it again. We did not. She looked faintly cheated.
The silhouette booth was tucked under a tent at the far end of the strip. A small woman in a wool cape sat behind a stool with scissors and black paper. She did the three of us in profile in the order Rhea picked, Chloe first because Chloe was prettiest, me second because I was tallest, Rhea third because she would not sit still. Then Rhea pushed Beom-Beom up onto the stool and announced, with no room for argument, that he also needed one. The woman looked at the bear. She looked at Rhea. She smiled and cut a fourth.
Somewhere between the caramel apple and the silhouettes, Chloe's hand slid into my coat pocket and found mine. The ring box was in the other pocket. Her fingers wound through my fingers and my thumb passed over the back of her knuckles where the band would go in twenty minutes, twelve minutes, eight. She did not know what my thumb was measuring. I kept my other hand on the box like a small warm engine I needed to keep running.
We drifted south. I did not steer her. I let her drift. She drifted because Rhea had spotted the apple-bobbing booth and was already telling Beom-Beom not to fall in.
They were there. All of them. Lily on Alek's arm in a coat with a fur collar, Mikhail with Sienna tucked into his side, Ivan and Jade standing a step apart from the rest the way Ivan alwaysstood, present and separate at once. They were arranged like a loose half-circle of people who had simply happened to be in this part of the fairground at the same moment.
Chloe's grandmother stood at the front of them in a coat too big for her shoulders, her small hands tucked into the sleeves, her mouth already trying not to smile. Jacob stood next to her with his hands in his pockets, his hair cut shorter than the last time I had seen him. He met my eye over the heads of the rest. He nodded once. I nodded back. The thing that had stood between us in another year on another lawn was a thing both of us had carried into adulthood and set down. He had set it down first. I had set it down second. We were even.
I stopped Chloe under the oak. The white lights were strung through the bare branches above our heads. Her face was flushed pink at the cheekbones. The caramel was still at the corner of her mouth.
She looked up at me. She was still laughing about something Rhea had said two minutes ago.
"What are you doing?" she said.
"Something I should have done sooner," I said.
I went down on one knee. The grass was cold through the fabric of my trousers. The carnival noise dropped away in stages, the band first, then the rustle of people, then the wind in the dry leaves above our heads, until what was left was the small hot space between her hand and mine and the breath she was forgetting to take. My heart was at the back of my throat. I had not felt it climbing.
I took her hand. The small white scar at my left index knuckle caught the string lights. I had earned that scar in a way I did not regret, because the day I earned it was the day she decided I was hers.
"Chloe Kim," I said. Low. Slow. Real. "I came back to a life I did not remember, and the first thing I knew without anyonetelling me was that I belonged to you. I have loved you with two memories and one heart. I would like to spend the rest of my life loving you with all three. Will you marry me?"
She was crying. She was laughing. She was shaking her head as if she could not believe what was happening, even though every single person she loved was standing in a half-circle behind her in coats and gloves and tears.
"Yes," she said. Small. Real. Soaked. "Yes, Daniil. Yes."
I slid the ring onto her finger. It fit. Of course it fit. I kissed the back of her hand. I kissed her ring finger right over the band. Behind her, the half-circle of family let out the breath they had been holding all at once, like one body. The brothers clapped. Mikhail made a noise that was loud and undignified and I would not let him forget it later. Grandma pressed both hands over her mouth.
