Simon hummed, nuzzling my hair. “How does thirty feel?”
I shifted in place. “Pretty much like twenty-nine did yesterday,” I admitted. “I dunno why people worry about it. In my head, I’m still nineteen. In love with my best friend. Only it’s better now, because I get to kiss him whenever I want.”
“Always,” Simon promised. “I, uh. I’ve got something for you.”
I twisted around to look at him. “You gave it to me this morning,” I said. It’d been a beautiful, vintage copy ofPersuasion, bound in leather that’d been worn soft from handling. On the inside cover, he’d written,You pierce my soul.Love always, Simon.
I’d cried messy, unattractive tears over it and he’d held my face in both his hands and kissed them away and let me cling to him long enough to make us both late to work.
“Something else,” Simon said, which was when I caught the note of… something I couldn’t quite figure out in his voice. If it’d beenme, I might’ve called it nerves. But Simon was never nervous. Not around me, anyway.
Besides, what could he possibly want to give me that he’d benervousabout?
“It’s, uh,” he continued. “Something you said I could give you, umm. When I found the right moment.”
My heart stopped mid-beat and tripped over itself as I sat up and turned around to face him. When I did, there was a shy little smile on his face, and he was looking down at something in his hand.
A box. Black velvet, one edge of it worn bald where he was running his thumb over it.
He must’ve been doing that for a while.
“Simon…” I looked between the box and his face, heart pounding in my ears. I’d forgotten I’d said that until he reminded me, but…
“Yes,” I said, covering his hand with my own. “Obviously, yes.”
He looked up, meeting my eyes, one brow raised. “I haven’t asked yet.”
I shrugged. “You don’t have to. For once in our lives, you can be the one who doesn’t have to ask for something.”
“All the same,” he said, turning his hand to press the box into mine. “I’m already the happiest man in the world sitting next to you, but… help me annoy your mother the absolute best way I can think of?”
I laughed, too sharp and too loud, breaking into a grin so wide it made my face pull. I surged forward as I closed my fingers around the box, colliding with Simon’s nose and his glasses asI pressed my mouth against his. I was too busy giggling for technique, but it was still the best kiss of my life so far. Just like every single kiss I shared with him—each one was better than the last because of all the ones that’d come before it, and all the ones I knew were coming after.
The one on our wedding day was definitely something to look forward to.
“Yes,” I repeated. “I will help you annoy my mother. As long as we don’t have to get married at the house.”
“We can get married in the living room if you want. Uh,” he interrupted himself, brows drawing together. “I mean, if we literally can. I’m not sure that would be legal.”
“Courthouse works for me,” I said. “Should’ve asked yesterday,” I added. “You’re too late to take half the trust fund in the divorce.”
I’d never found out if that was actually possible. As of today, it was a moot point.
“That was the idea,” Simon said.
Of course it was. Because he wanted me forme. And he wanted to be sure I’d know that, even if I would never,everhave seriously thought he was after the money.
If Simon cared about money, he could have been a rocket scientist or whatever. He was more than smart enough.
He did things for love.
Like, for example, proposing to me.
“Open it,” Simon nudged, pecking the tip of my nose.
I cracked open the box to find not one, but two interlocking gold bands inside, twisted together so they couldn’t be separated and hung from a thin chain.
“You never wear rings, so I wasn’t sure you’d want to start,” Simon explained. “You don’t have to wear it atall, obvious?—”
