"She looks well," her mother said, watching Nadia across the room. "Better than well."
"She is," I said.
"You both do." She gave me a look that reminded me Nadia had learned her ability to see too much from somewhere. "It's good to see."
I found Nadia near the kitchen doorway around eight, in the brief window between the main service wrapping up and dessert going out. She had her tablet in hand and was running through something with one of her staff, but when she looked up and saw me, she handed the tablet over and stepped away.
"How's it going?" I asked.
"Well. The Peterson coordinator is here, the one from the dinner. She's been talking to two other corporate clients all evening." She leaned against the wall beside me, shoulder to shoulder, and looked out across the room. "Six months ago I nearly handed all of this over."
"You didn't, though."
"We didn't." She tilted her head against my shoulder briefly. "There's a difference."
Across the room, Cole was standing near the edge of the collective group. Sarah had cornered him with a small notebook, obviously after his opinion on something. Cole was doing the thing he did when something had his attention without him wanting it to.
He wasn't looking at the notebook. He was looking at her, at the way she talked with her hands when she got going, his expression that of a man who'd walked into something he hadn't been prepared for.
I filed that away.
He'd been the one who told me three years ago that nobody owed me anything and that I had to build my own life. It had never crossed my mind that he'd need the same advice one day. I decided not to mention it. Some things a man had to figure out on his own.
"Come outside for a minute," I said to Nadia.
She looked at me. "Everything okay?"
"Everything's fine. I want to show you something."
She handed her earpiece to the staff member and followed me out through the side door onto the venue's patio. The evening was cool and clear, the sort of California night that reminded you why people stayed. String lights ran along the fence line, left over from a previous event, and the noise of the party was muffled to a low, pleasant hum through the walls.
Nadia looked around. "What did you want to show me?"
"Nothing." I turned to face her. "I wanted two minutes without sixty people in the room."
She looked at me, then at my jacket, then back at my face, putting it together.
"Daemon."
"I've been carrying something for three weeks," I said. "Waiting for the right time, and it keeps moving. I've realized the problem is I've been thinking about this like a man who's still afraid of getting it wrong."
I reached into my inside pocket. "I'm not afraid. I want you to know that. I'm not doing this because it's now or never, or because anything is forcing my hand. I'm doing it because I want to. Because you're the first thing I've ever been completely certain about."
She stilled.
I opened the box. Simple white gold, a single stone, clean and uncluttered. The jeweler had asked what she was like, and I'd said: precise, direct, no unnecessary decoration. He'd shown me this one first, and I'd known immediately.
"I love you," I said. "I won't be perfect. But I'm going to be here every day doing the work. That's what I've got to offer." I looked at her. "Nadia Becker. Will you marry me?"
She didn't answer right away. She looked at the ring, then at my face, and whatever she found there made her close her eyes briefly.
"Yes," she said. Her voice was steady, but something in it broke open in the best way. "Obviously yes. You ridiculous man."
I slid the ring onto her finger. She looked at it, then kissed me the way she had in the parking lot six months ago, like she was done waiting and done holding back, and the lights blurred at the edges, and I didn't care about any of it except her.
When we came back inside, Sofia was the first to notice. She let out a sound that was half sob and half triumph and said something in Italian that I suspected was aimed at God rather than either of us.
Nadia's mother saw next. Then her sister. Then, with the speed of big news in small towns, everyone.
