His mouth curved. “Beautiful, Nate announced at dinner that if I proposed tonight, he expected this household to observe a respectful one-hour noise buffer.”
I covered my face. “I hate him.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I deeply hate him.”
Dylan’s laugh was low and warm, and when I lowered my hands, he was watching me with that look again. Not the hungry, reckless one from the hospital. Not the guilty one. Not even the stunned, grateful one from the snow.
This was quieter.
Deeper.
A man looking at his future and still not quite believing she had said yes.
My ring caught the lamplight when I dropped my hands. Turquoise, diamonds, mother-of-pearl. Desert, history, promise.
Dylan’s gaze followed it.
“You okay?” he asked.
I smiled a little. “You’re asking me that after proposing in the snow in front of my entire insane family?”
“Yes.”
“I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
“No,” I admitted. “But in a good way.”
His face softened.
I stepped closer and touched his chest. He was still in the dark sweater he’d worn to dinner, the one Regan had told him made him look “respectable but still dangerous enough not to bore Destiny.” Under my palm, his heart beat hard and steady.
Alive.
Mine.
Not because he owned me.
Because we had chosen each other.
“I thought the house in San Diego would be where this happened,” he said quietly.
I knew what he meant.
Not the proposal.
This.
The after.
The moment where yes stopped being a word and became skin, breath, hands, forever.
I slid my fingers up to his collar. “The house is still waiting.”
“Yeah?”
