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His truck is parked by the gate.

He’s sitting in it. Not inside the house, where Galana would have fed him. In the truck, in the dark, with the engine off and his hands resting on the wheel.

Something in my stomach turns over.

I don’t go inside. I walk straight across the gravel, open the passenger door and get in, putting my bag of picture books on the floor between my feet.

“You didn’t say goodbye,” I say. “And you didn’t text. I don’t know if I should be worried or not.”

He’s looking straight ahead through the windshield, at the house, at the lamp burning in Galana’s window. His jaw is tight.

“Theo.” I wait until he looks at me. “Every day. The truth, even when it’s ugly. That was the deal.”

For a long moment he doesn’t say anything at all.

“I heard you this morning,” he says finally. “In the office. With Zhenya.”

I go cold. I replay it in my head. Zhenya, low and urgent. You could still walk away. And me.

It’s not like I have a choice.

“Oh,” I whisper.

“I know what it could mean.” His voice is very even. Too even. “The trust. The house. The schedule. Your sisters. I know there are a hundred reasons.” He turns his head, and I see what the evenness is covering. “But Galana stood on this drive yesterday morning and told me she’s allowed to say no, except if she does, everyone loses everything. And then I heard you say you didn’t have a choice, and I couldn’t...” He stops. “I won’t be another thing that was done to you, Evaria. I’d rather walk away.”

“You should have said something,” I say. “This morning. You should have come into the office and asked me what I meant.”

He thinks about it for a moment. “I know.”

“You broke the rule.”

“I know.” His hands tighten on the wheel. “I’m asking now.”

I look at him. This big, broken-nosed, frightening man, sitting in a cold truck for who knows how long because he couldn’t bear to come into the house until he knew whether he was wanted in it.

I press the heels of my hands to my eyes when they begin to sting.

“Zhenya wanted me to walk away,” I say. “She was asking me to choose against you. And I said I don’t have a choice, because I don’t.” I take a breath. “I already made it. In your office, with your terrible coffee and your purple horse picture. In the yard at the shelter, when Noah made you move the post twice and you did it without complaining. In this truck.” I feel my face heat, and I don’t care. “Every day since I walked into your gym, Theo, I’ve been choosing. I just didn’t say it out loud, because nobody ever asks me.”

He doesn’t move. I’m not sure he’s breathing.

“Papa didn’t ask me,” I go on. “Viktor read my name off a piece of paper and nobody asked me anything at all. So I’m not going to wait for anyone to ask me now.”

I reach into my bag. Between the picture books, wrapped in a tissue so it doesn’t crumble, is the daisy. Flat and brown and bent at the stem.

I put it in his palm.

“Fyodor Richardovich Nevolin,” I say, and my voice only shakes a little. “Will you marry me?”

He stares at the daisy in his enormous hand.

Then he looks up at me, and his eyes are wet, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t think anyone has.

“You’re proposing,” he says roughly. “With Mila’s daisy.”

“It’s all that I have that means something to both of us..”

He laughs. It breaks halfway through. He closes his hand around the flower very, very carefully.