Page 98 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

I grab my jacket and go down.

He's leaning against the car when I come out — not in the back, standing outside it, his jacket on and his hands in his pockets and the specific look of a man who has been thinking about something all evening. He straightens when he sees me. He looks at me the way he always looks at me now — directly, completely, with nothing managed about it.

"How was dinner?" he asks.

"Perfect," I say. "Loud and warm and exactly what I needed."

He opens the door. I get in. He comes around and gets in beside me and we pull away from the curb and the city moves past the windows and his hand finds mine on the seat between us.

"Where are we going?" I ask.

"Somewhere," he says.

I look at him. "That's not an answer."

"It's a preview," he says.

I look at his profile in the passing light. There is something in his expression I can't fully read — not unusual for him, but the specific quality of it isdifferent tonight. Focused. Like a man who has been preparing for something. I don't push. I watch the city go by and I hold his hand and I let the evening be what it's becoming.

The car stops at the waterfront. Embarcadero, near the Ferry Building — the city spread behind us, the bay ahead, the lights of the East Bay reflected across the water. It's a clear night, which in San Francisco means something, because the fog doesn't always allow it. The water is dark and glittering and the air is cold and clean.

Logan opens my door. He takes my hand. We walk to the water's edge — the wooden promenade, the sound of the bay against the pilings below, the city doing its nighttime thing behind us. There's almost no one out here at this hour. Just the water and the lights and us. We walk for a bit without talking. It's enough — just this, just the night and his hand in mine and the specific peace of a city I've made my home.

He stops. I stop beside him. I look out at the water.

"I have something to say," he says.

I turn to look at him. He's facing me. His expression is open — not the careful control of the man I met, not the managed composure of the first months, not even the gradual warmth of the months after that. Just him. Fully, completely him, with nothing between us and nothing held back.

"When I came to your apartment a few months ago," he says, "I told you I was choosing you. That was true. It's still true. But there's a difference between choosing someone in a moment ofcrisis and choosing them for everything that comes after." He reaches into his jacket pocket.

"I've been thinking about what comes after."

My breath hitches in my throat. My heart is pounding louder than the waves crashing below. He opens the box in his hand. The ring inside catches the waterfront lights — a diamond, round and brilliant, set in platinum with smaller stones along the band. It is exquisite. It is exactly what I would have chosen if anyone had asked me, which no one did, which means he paid attention in some way I cannot account for.

He goes down on one knee. Logan Drake. On one knee. On a waterfront in San Francisco on a Thursday night. The man who told everyone ten years ago he would never do this again — down on one knee, looking up at me with eyes that are completely clear and completely certain. I press my hand over my mouth.

"I'm not going to list what you've done for me," he says.

"You didn't come into my life to fix me and I won't reduce you to that." He holds my gaze.

"What I'll tell you is this. You are the only person I have ever met who made me want to be known. Not managed, not admired, not respected — known. The real version. The difficult, guarded, too-much version." He pauses.

"You didn't just see past the walls. You made me want to take them down."

I am not breathing.

"I broke my own promise coming here tonight," he says.

"The one I made ten years ago. I'm breaking it because you are worth every promise I ever made to myself, and more." He looks at me steadily.

"Sutton Kane. Will you marry me."

It isn't a question. It is Logan — even now, even here, on one knee at the edge of the bay — making a declaration rather than asking a favor. And it is the mosthimthing he has ever done and I love him completely for it.

I look at him for one long moment. This man who wouldn't look up from his desk the first morning I walked in. Who communicated in corrections and silences and the specific language of a person who had decided the world was safer at a distance. Who stepped toward me on a terrace in Dallas and then walked away. Who saidpleasein a hotel corridor in New York because he couldn't let me leave. Who told his brother before he told me. Who showed up at my door and took down the last wall he had left.

"Yes," I say. My voice is steady.