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“Look at me.”
When I open my eyes, my jaw drops. Dom is a few feet away from me—dashing as ever in his tuxedo and giving me a wolfish smile—but it’s the scene behind him that steals my breath.
There’s a grove of trees with lights wrapped around their trunks and branches surrounding an expansive clearing. And in the middle of the clearing, right in front of where Dom and I are standing, is a foundation for what’s going to be a huge house. The sun has already gone down, and there isn’t much light coming from the trees, but every inch of it is visible thanks to the lit candles outlining it.
Oh, God. My heart stutters to a stop when I realize what he’s done. It’s the house of candles from my favorite episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Dom and I watched it one night while we were cuddling on my couch. I told him how romantic I thought it was, and the glow in his eyes as I gushed over Derek’s reaction to Meredith’s vulnerability was so intense I jumped his bones before the scene was over.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Dom moving towards me and reluctantly drag my eyes from the amazing sight in front of me to him. And thank God I do, because otherwise, I would have missed my chance to see him sink down on one knee in front of me with a ring box he must have pulled out of thin air open in his hands.
“Dom…” I don’t even know what to say because I don’t know what it means yet. I know what I think it means, but I want him to say it. “What is all of this? What are you doing?”
“Making it up to you.”
“With a house?” I can’t even mention the ring, haven’t even been able to bring myself to look at it yet.
He laughs. “Yes. One I hope you’ll share with me for the rest of our lives. I want you in my bed every night, Sloane. In my arms, in my home. You said we couldn’t be us in my place, so I thought maybe we should have our own place. Something we built together, something that belongs to us.”
A tear falls from my eye without my permission as I take in the glowing lot again. “This is the secret project you’ve been working on. The one you wouldn’t give me any details about. You were never going to California.”
“I was never leaving you, and I told you I would need your help with it.” He seems content to let me drive the conversation even though I know he has a lot of things he wants to say. “And I will need it. I can build the house, but you’ll have to tell me what to put in it. Sloane, look at me.”
Following his command is easy even though my frayed nerves have me moving in slow motion. I lose my breath again at the sight of him on one knee. By what it means. A life with Dom. Not just a few weeks together. Stolen nights, hidden desires, lingering touches—all the hallmarks of forbidden love reversed by a question I already know the answer to.
“You’re really doing this.”
“Every moment in my life has led me to this moment, angel. Of course, I’m doing this. Now, are you going to let me?” And there it is again, the inevitability that’s defined us from the moment we first laid eyes on each other. That invisible needle and thread linking my heart to his. For so long I’ve thought that thread, and the way it moved, was just a result of our connection. A by-product of the electricity racing between us, but now I know it wasn’t just acting of its own volition. There was a hand holding the needle.
The same one that’s steadied me with firm pressure at my back countless times, wiped my tears when I cried over things I couldn’t change, and spelled love in my skin with gentle strokes of fingertips.
Dom was the one holding the needle that stitched my heart back together. And he’d done it quietly, carefully, and at great cost to himself because he knew there was no hope in finding the piece of my heart I’d lost four years ago when Eric died, so he gave me pieces of his instead. Using them to put mine back together again, to make me whole. To restore me.
I put my hand on his cheek, letting my fingers sink into the soft hair of his beard. “Yes. Sorry. Please go ahead before I start crying.”
“Sloane Elise Kent, I’ve loved you for a lifetime, pretended to hate you for over a decade, and spent more than my fair share of time thinking the only thing I was destined to do in this life was want you. I used to look at it as a bad thing, but now I know it’s not. Because wanting you is the only thing that’s gotten me through living without you. It’s gotten me to this moment right here, where I can look you in the eyes and tell you that I love you and I can’t live without you. That I want your messy hair, your bare feet, your anger and heartache, your smiles and cuddles, your kisses and your moans. I want everything, including the honor of calling you my wife. Can I have that, angel?”
My throat is tight, constricting around a ball of emotions I can’t even begin to name, but I manage to push past it because this answer is too important not to put words to.
“Oh my God, Dom.” I laugh through the tears. “Yes.” I don’t even let him stand all the way up before I’m launching myself at him and showering his face with kisses. He catches me with a grunt and kisses me back, both of his hands going to my waist to steady me. The ring box digs into my skin, and panic grips me as I finally think about what saying yes to Dom means for the rings Eric gave me: taking them off, setting aside the symbol of my love for one man to make space for the claim of another.
Dom sets me on the ground and straightens his tux as I start to fidget with my wedding bands. I don’t want him to be the one to pull them off to place his ring on my finger. I’ve just started to slide my engagement ring off when his hands cover mine. “What are you doing?”
My brows fall together. “I have to take these off, so I can wear the ring you got me.” The one I haven’t even bothered to look at.
“No, you don’t.” He opens the box back up. “Did you even look at the ring, angel?” I shake my head, which makes him laugh even harder as he puts the box in the interior pocket of his jacket.“What kind of woman doesn’t look at the ring before she says yes?”
“One who’s more excited about the man she’s saying yes to than the ring itself.”
My comment wins me a tender smile that sends liquid heat through my veins. Dom reaches for me, pulling my left hand into his and fixing my rings. Liquid pools of obsidian swallow me whole as he strokes his thumb over the stone in my engagement ring.
“Did you know Eric and I picked these out together?”
I blink, trying to remember if that was information I’d ever been made privy to. Not likely, since Eric went out of his way not to mention Dom to me when it wasn’t necessary. “No. He never told me. Probably because he knew I would have chucked the ring at his head if I had known.”
“Probably,” Dom smirks. “Anyway, since I was with him when he bought these, and I know how much they mean to you—how much he means to you—I was able to contact the jeweler and have this made.”
The metal is cold as he slips it onto my finger, but it’s the band that stops my heart. It’s silver, like the other two rings I’ve worn every day for the last six years, with alternating diamonds that sparkle brilliantly in their individual settings.
He pushes the band all the way down until it’s flush with the tip of the pear-shaped diamond of my engagement ring. It slides into place perfectly, enhancing the already impressive set and making a gorgeous stacked trio.
