Page 318 of Vicious Temptation

“You wrote all of that to him?”

“Yeah.”

Her mouth trembles. “Thiago...”

“I didn’t know what else to do with it at the time. He was the one person I could say all of it to without having to explain myself.”

She closes the notebook and holds it against her chest.

“You should’ve shown me this sooner.”

“I know.”

“No.” She shakes her head gently. “I mean...I wish I’d known you were carrying all of this.”

I take her hand. “I wasn’t ready to give it to you then. But I wrote in it again recently.”

“You did?”

I nod toward the notebook. “There was one more thing I needed to tell him. Turn to the last page.”

She wipes a traitorous tear from beneath my eye, smiles at me, then turns to the final entry.

Pai,

Eu vou me casar com ela.⁠*

I don’t know when I’ll ask yet, but I know she’s the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I love her in a way I didn’t know I was capable of loving anyone. She gave me a family before I even knew I was looking for one and a home in the last place I ever expected to find it.

You would have loved her too. She would have given you endless shit about your taste in cars, stolen your records, and somehow convinced you that you were the lucky one for letting her do it.

A watery laugh slips from Remi, but she doesn’t stop reading.

I wish you could meet her. I wish you could see the life I have now. I think you’d look at me and know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

I’m going to ask her to be my wife.

Remi goes completely still.

Her fingers grip the edge of the page. She doesn’t say a word, and when she finally looks at me, her beautiful blue eyes shine.

“Yes!”

Before I can say anything, she sets the notebook aside and launches herself at me. I catch her as her arms loop around my neck, and she kisses me, laughing through the tears that wet both our faces.

“Yes,” she says again. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

“Baby,” I manage when she finally lets me breathe. “I haven’t even asked you yet.”

“You did.”

I pull back enough to look at her.

She glances at the notebook beside us before meeting my eyes again. “You just took the long way to get there.”

“I actually had a plan. I talked to your parents earlier this week.”

“They knew?”