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She scrunches her nose up playfully. “Ew, no. I mean… maybe a little. Like, a very, very?—
Chuckling, I press my palm to her cheek. “It’s okay to miss me. You don’t have to play it so cool all the time.”
She sighs. Instead of jabbing back like I expected her to, she nuzzles sadly into my touch. “I just don’t want to spend my whole life missing you, Dmitri,” she explains. “But yes—for the record, I did miss you.”
I kiss the top of her head. “You scared me last night.”
“It was just a little nosebleed.”
“Your clothes were soaked in blood, Wren.”
She waves my worry away. “I told you and Liza both it was nothing serious. Still healthy—this is just something that happens when?—”
“I know all of that. But as satisfying an explanation as it may or may not be, it doesn’t change the fact that I hate watching you suffer. Even if it’s as simple as a headache.”
“Well, I’m fine now. Can we go home? This hospital gown is itchy as hell.”
I like the way she says it. That combination of “we” and “home”—it just melts together so damn perfectly. I reach into my pocket and wrap my fingers around the weight that’s burning a hole there.
“Not quite yet. I have a question I need to ask you first.”
“If it’s about what I want to eat when we get home, the answer is your homemade gnocchi. I’ve been craving it all morning. I had a dream that I was chasing a life-sized one through the woods. Couldn’t catch the little bastard.”
“I can arrange that. But that’s not the question I was about to ask you.”
“Oh,” she says, turning a flattering shade of pink. “Sorry, just a little hungry.”
Smiling, I pull out the box in my pocket and hold it up to her eyes. “This is where I was all morning. Apparently, most jewelers—” Her eyes go wide with shock as that word hits home. “—sleep in ‘til like nine a.m., the lazy motherfuckers.”
“J-jewelers?” she gasps, staring down at the box with new eyes. “Dmitri, what did you—what are you—is this really—Huh?!”
I snap the lid open and reveal the massive princess cut diamond surrounded by a cushion of bright green emeralds. “Wren Turner, I love you. I want you to spend the rest of your life with me. Will you?—”
She grabs my hand and cuts me off mid-spiel. “Dmitri! Stop.” I pause as she blinks at me a few times. “You’ve never said you love me before.”
“I would have thought it was obvious.”
Her bottom lip trembles and her eyes slide down to the diamond on its velvet bed. “Y-you… want to marry me?”
“More than anything.”
“Why?”
This woman. Can’t she see it? Can’t she see this shit that’s burning out of every goddamn pore in my body? Can’t she see how she’s the obsessive focus of every thought, every breath, every action and impulse and emotion churning through me?
Can’t she see I’d die for her?
“Because I want you to carry my name, Wren. I want you to have the protection it carries. But that’s just the practical side of things. You want to know the unpractical part? That I’m addicted to you. And I’m a jealous bastard. A vengeful one. A proud one. So I want to put a rock on your finger that announces to the whale world that you are mine. That you always will be. That I love you. That no one alive has ever loved someone the way I love you.”
She pulls in a teary breath and tries to fumble for words, but they don’t come.
That’s okay. For the first time in my life, I know exactly what to say to make her smile.
“I didn’t do it right the first time around. Fate gave me another chance, though. I won’t fuck this one up.”
Wren’s mouth keeps opening and closing, opening and closing. The room is eerily silent. “Though,” I add, “you do eventually have to answer the question.”
She gives me a little mock punch on the arm. “Okay, okay. I’m ready. Go on. Ask me.” She sits up straighter on her pillows and gestures for me to continue with her hand.
