He stood in front of me with both hands inside his pockets. For the first time since I had known him, he looked nervous. Not afraid. Lev didn’t allow himself that kind of expression. But there was tension in his jaw and something uncertain behind his eyes.
“Come here,” he said.
“I’m already here.”
A few people laughed softly. He ignored them and took my hand. The music continued behind us, low enough that I could hear the water moving against the side of the property. The Miami skyline glowed in the distance, blurred slightly by the tears already gathering in my eyes.
Lev looked down at our hands before raising his gaze to mine. “I don’t do speeches and everybody standing around waiting on one ain’t making this shit no easier.”
More laughter moved through the crowd, but his eyes stayed on me.
He continued. “When I first met you, you I didn’t know if I wanted to love you or end you.”
I stared at him. “This is your opening?”
“Let me finish.”
I pressed my lips together.
His thumb moved across the back of my hand. “But you made me feel something I wasn’t looking for. I didn’t plan on caring about nobody like that. I damn sure didn’t plan on falling in love.”
My smile disappeared as the weight of his words settled over me. I didn’t want to cry but I couldn’t help it.
“I watched you go through shit that should’ve broke you,” he continued. “I watched people who was supposed to protect you be the ones that hurt you. Then I watched you wake up in that hospital and have to learn how to live all over again.”
My eyes burned like hell now. Lev’s voice lowered even more, and the people around us seemed to disappear. “There were days you didn’t want nobody touching you. Days you ain’t wanna look in the mirror. Days you was mad at everybody because your body didn’t do what you wanted it to do, and every one of them days, I looked at you and saw the same woman.”
A tear slipped down my cheek. He lifted his free hand and wiped it away. “You keep thinking I love you around what happened to you. Like I gotta see past something.” He shook his head slowly. “I ain’t looking past shit. That leg is part of you now, and I love every part of you. Ain’t nowhere else I wanna be, and ain’t nobody else I wanna be there with.”
The crowd got completely silent. Lev released my hand and reached inside his jacket. I nearly lost my breath as he removed a black velvet box, then lowered himself onto one knee. Behind me, part of the crowd gasp and part cheered but all I could see was him, the same man who had held me in the parking lot while I bled. The man who sat beside my hospital bed when I screamed that I didn’t want to live. The man who learned how to clean my incision, adjust my shower chair, and help me through phantom pain without ever making me feel helpless. The man who never once treated my body like it had become less worthy of wanting.
He opened the box exposing a large oval-cut diamond, surrounded by a hidden halo that caught the light beneath it. Smaller diamonds covered the band, each one set so closely together that the entire ring appeared to glow.
I stared at it as my lips trembled. My divorce with Rome had finalized three months ago and I wasn’t so sure I would ever get married again, but Lev isn’t Rome. “Lev.”
“Seven-carat, flawless center stone,” he said. “Custom setting, cost two hundred and eighty thousand before BJ start asking.”
His grandmother yelled from behind him, “I already know!”
Everybody laughed through their tears. I covered my mouth with my free hand. Lev looked up at me, with his expression serious again. “I’m not asking because you almost died. I’m asking because I feel sorry for you. I’m asking because I decided a long time ago that wherever you end up, that’s where I’m supposed to be.”
My tears came faster. “I love you so much,” I told him.
“You don’t gotta marry me tomorrow. You don’t have to set a date until you ready. You got healing to do, and I’m not rushing none of it, but understand something.” His fingers tightened around the ring box. “After everything we been through, ain’t no way I’m letting you walk out my life. Navy Prescott, you gon’ be my wife. Question is whether you agreeing willingly or I gotta keep asking until you tired of hearing me.”
A laugh broke through my crying. I told him, “That’s not how a proposal works.”
“It’s how this one work.”
I looked around at our families. Lulu was crying openly against Monica’s shoulder. BJ stood with one hand pressed to her chest. Tasha smiled through tears. Mike shook his head as if he already knew Lev would find a way to turn a proposal into a threat.
When I looked back down, Lev was still waiting. For once, there was no uncertainty inside me. “Yes baby,” I nodded my head while sniffing away the happy tears.
His shoulders relaxed. “Yes?” he repeated.
“Yes, Lev. I’ll marry you.”
The terrace erupted. He slid the ring onto my finger before standing, then wrapped one arm around my waist and pulled meagainst him. I laughed into his chest as applause and shouting filled the space around us.
