“Had fire metaphors and everything.”
“I would have left you in the snow.”
“I figured.” His thumb brushed over my knuckles. “So I’ll keep it simple.”
My eyes burned before he even opened the box.
The ring inside stole my breath.
Turquoise at the center, deep and vivid as desert sky after rain. Tiny diamonds framed it, bright but not showy. Along the band, mother-of-pearl shimmered faintly, soft as moonlight. It was Mandy and Tarak and Edge and Dylan and me. Not ghosts. Not wounds.
Pieces of the story made into something whole.
“You told me once I didn’t get to decide I wasn’t in your story,” Dylan said, voice rough. “You were right. I tried. I ran. I called it protection, then guilt, then honor. But you were written into me before I knew how to read it.”
A tear slipped down my cheek.
He swallowed.
“I don’t want to own your future. I don’t want to rescue it. I don’t want to stand in front of it and call that love.” His eyes held mine. “I want to build beside it. I want your bad days, your night shifts, your matcha, your stubbornness, your scary best friend, and whatever level of visitation rights Lily gives me with Cupcake.”
I laughed through tears.
“I want the house to become ours when you’re ready,” he said. “I want your shoes by the door and your books on the nightstand and your basil judgment in the backyard. I want every ordinary morning you’ll give me. I want the hard ones too.”
My hand trembled in his.
He looked down for one second, then back up.
“You’ve been my almost for too long,” he said. “I don’t want almost anymore.”
The cold disappeared.
The world narrowed to his face.
“Destiny Rourke,” he said, “will you marry me?”
I should have had a clever answer.
Something sharp. Something teasing. Something that kept me from crying all over the man kneeling in the snow.
But love had never made me clever when it mattered.
Only honest.
“You’ve been written in since the fire,” I whispered.
His face changed.
The same way it had the night I agreed to one date.
Relief.
Joy.
Disbelief that life could be kind after being so hard.
“Yes?” he asked.
