Unless…
I stride over to the chair and grab the coat. My hand grasps for the pockets. The first one is empty, but when I reach in the second, my fingers meet a small wrapped box.
I pull it out. It’s small and square and fits perfectly atop my palm. It’s wrapped in shiny silver paper.
“You found it.” Calder’s voice is strange. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
This is it. Suddenly all that weirdness I noticed in him tonight makes sense. He was anxious. Nervous. About the thing that rests in this tiny little box.
My heart beats so loudly that I feel like the entire room is pulsing. Calder is right next to me, and I swear I can hear his heartbeat, too.
Inside I find another box—but this one isn’t wrapped. It’s small with a satiny finish and a clamshell hinge. My hand shakes as I pull it out.
“Calder, I—” My voice sounds so tiny, so timid. I can’t breathe. My fingers go numb.
But Calder takes the box from me. He lowers himself to one knee, the box resting on his upturned palm.
“Lily,” he says. “You’ve made me happier than I ever thought I could be. You gave me strength when I thought the world was crumbling around me. You made me laugh when I thought there was only grief and pain. You showed me that I could be a better man. And I try to be a better man, every single day, for you.”
My knees are trembling. No, scratch that—my entire body is quivering, as if I’m not physically strong enough for this moment.
“You’ve lit a fire in me, Lily,” he continues. “I’ve never felt anything like this in my entire life, and I know I’ll never feel anything like it ever again. You’ve shown me all the joy and all the passion and all the love that my life can hold, and I want you by my side every day until the very end of it.”
He opens the box, revealing the most beautiful diamond ring I’ve ever seen—and if the sparkle is in any way exaggerated by the tears in my eyes, well, that doesn’t matter.
“Lily Frazer,” he says, “will you marry me?”
I can hardly draw enough air to breathe, let alone speak, but my lips manage to form the word.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes. Yes!”
I throw myself at him, nearly knocking the box right off his hand, but he manages to catch both me and the ring. I lift the ring from the box, and he takes it from me and slides it onto my finger.
I’m afraid to believe this is happening. Afraid that any second now I’ll open my eyes and find myself curled up on the mattress in the other room. But Calder is too warm, too solid to be anything but one hundred percent real. I throw my arm around his neck and kiss him.
“I know loving me isn’t always easy,” he says when I pull away to take a breath. His hands slip into the hair on either side of my head, holding my face in front of his. “I know that I come with a lot of baggage. But I promise, I want nothing more than your love. And your happiness.”
“I think you have that backward,” I say. “I’m the one who causes problems most of the time. I’m the one who always leaps to conclusions and acts without thinking and generally makes a muck of things. I’m impulsive and brash and stubborn and—”
“And I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He captures my mouth with his own—once, twice, three times—before releasing me again.
“I love you,” I tell him. “Even now, I don’t think you realize how much.”
“If it’s half as much as I love you, then I consider myself the luckiest man in the world.”
I close my eyes, letting his words wash over me. Maybe my dad and Lou think we’re moving too fast, but that doesn’t matter. I could never want or love anyone as much as I love the man in front of me.
That’s not to say it will be easy. We still have our respective relatives to deal with—and there will always be aches and fears and shadows of the past—but now we’re making a real commitment to face them together.
“I want to be your family,” he says softly. “And I want you to be mine.”
There are years of pain behind his words, but the love, the hope, is just as strong. I feel it too—like a blossom unfurling in my chest. I can’t erase all of his shadows, but I can be his sun and pull him up into the light.
“Don’t cry,” he says. “This is supposed to be a happy event.” He kisses me on either eyelid, then down across my cheeks, following the trails the tears leave.
“I am happy,” I whisper, my voice thick with emotion. “I’ve never been happier in all my life.”
I suddenly can’t get close enough to him, can’t possibly show him how much he means to me with just my lips and hands. It only takes a moment to take off my clothes, a moment more to remove his boxers. We move as one even before we’re joined. Our bodies know this dance, and yet for all its familiarity, I feel every touch, every burst of sensation and pleasure, as if I’m discovering his body for the first time.
Afterward, we lie wrapped around each other. The pale gray light of dawn peeks in around the window on the far wall.
“A year ago,” I say drowsily, “if someone had suggested that I’d one day agree to marry you, I’d have told them they were insane. Just think—if I’d never broken onto your estate, none of this would have happened.”
He chuckles. “That was a fine feat, I must admit. I look back upon that first night with great fondness.”
“You must have thought I was insane, climbing through your gate and making you wrestle me down in the mud.”
“Quite the contrary,” he says. “How could I not admire such audacity?”
“Audacity? More like stubbornness. And stupidity.”
“If you are stupid, sweet Lily, then I’m the eager, willing fool who loves you.” He presses his lips against my hair. “From the beginning you challenged me, and you’ve continued to challenge me every day since. You make me crazy, and you make me feel alive. It hasn’t always been easy, and there were many times I thought I’d lose you, but it was worth the struggle. Winning you was worth it.”
“Winning me?” I tease.
“Yes,” he says, leaning down to whisper in my ear. “And this is the sweetest victory I could ever ask for.”