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Dane pulls a little red box out of the pocket of the suit jacket I’m wearing and opens it. Inside the Cartier box, three rectangular diamonds wink back at me. Catching the light from the newly installed security floods, the stones return fire.
“The middle stone is the baby that brought us together,” he explains in a low voice. “And the ones flanking are you and me.” I continue to stare, trying to piece together how this could’ve happened and I didn’t see it coming. “They’re not big but the stones are perfect. Like you are to me.”
A switch is flipped, and suddenly synapses fire and connect. My lips part, my heart expands and contracts, and blood rushes in my ears. Tears flood my eyes, welling up in the corners and spill down my cheeks.
“Baby––” I hear him say, his voice muffled by all the noise in my head. I look up into his beautiful face and see caution. “You haven’t given me an answer.”
One moment I’m soaring, ready to throw my arms around him and profess my love, and the next I crash back down to earth. Because it hits me all at once. No love. No mention of love whatsoever. Beautiful sentiments expressed beautifully, but no love…where’s the love?
I wipe the tears away from my face. “I thought you were getting ready to dump me.”
“What?!” He looks as shocked as he sounds. “Why would you think that?”
“Three month rule…and I saw a picture of you kissing the blonde, Dane. It was all over the internet.” He looks confused so I clarify. “The night I went to the hospital.”
He looks away for a beat. Judging from his expression, he’s searching his memory. I know the instant he recalls it.
“Christy.” For a brief second his eyes close, his shoulders drop as he exhales his frustration. “She caught me by surprise and kissed me. She was drunk. High too, I think.” His expression changes, suspicion present in his narrowed eyes. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I didn’t think we had a problem. One stolen kiss from a drunk girl was hardly worth rememberin’.”
“A drunk ex-girlfriend.”
“Hey––look at me,” he says, and I do. “It wasn’t worth rememberin’.” His eyes dart all over my face, searching for a sign of agreement. “You believe me, right?”
I do believe him. Dane isn’t my father. He’s not sneaky cowardice. He’s bold honesty. If he were to fall for someone else, he would break it off with me first. I know it in my heart and soul. At my nod, he exhales loudly.
“Why do you want to marry me, Dane?” The question demands to be asked. I hold my breath as he stares back quizzically.
“Why?” he repeats, his tone communicating very clearly that he thinks this is a dumb question.
“Yes, why?”
“Because we’re great together––better than great.” His eyes soften. Taking my hands in his, he kisses the knuckles on each one. “The perfect team…don’t you agree?”
My heart falls off a cliff. Correction: he pushed it off of a cliff. The perfect team? Is this some kind of joke? My hands slip out of his and my head shuts down, retreating to a place where I’m not completely devastated.
“This is kind of unexpected…can I think about it?”
He takes forever to answer, watching me carefully. I don’t give anything away and neither does he. Though it’s not a stretch to assume he’s not happy.
After a curt nod, his eyes move away. “Will you wear the ring at least?” Sensing my reluctance, he adds in a thick voice, “For me.”
I don’t have it in me to hurt him any more than I already have. I love this man with everything I’ve got, will love him forever regardless of what happens between us.
I nod and he pushes it onto my finger. Standing, he pulls me up.
“Let’s get back inside. It’s freezing out here,” he says without looking at me.
We walk out of the garden hand in hand with a palpable tension the size of an ocean separating us. As soon as we step back into the party room, I realize what’s going on. His NFL buddies knew he was proposing. The entire crowd did, by the looks of it. Because as soon as they see us, smiles drop, voices grow quiet, and whispers weave through the crowd.
“Did she say yes?” A boy’s voice rings out of the silence. Angel Castro pushes to the front of the pack. He takes one look at Dane and the joy on his face slowly fades away.
Dane
Man, was that an epic fail. I stare at the bottle of Patron in my hand with mixed emotions. Much the same way Stella feels about me apparently. I sink further into the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table. The minute I do, I hear her telling me it’s “unsanitary.” Except she can’t tell me because she ain’t here, made me drive her back to her apartment and I didn’t argue. I need time to clear my head and drink. Not necessarily in that order.
The silence in the darkened living room sits like an anvil over my heart. The house I bought and renovated with painstaking care feels like a fucking funeral home without her. I’m about to skip the glass and go straight to drinking from the bottle when I decide to make a call first. The phone rings and rings. When it eventually goes to voicemail, I try again.
“Whuuuut?” I get on the third ring. The slurred speech gives me pause.
“Are you drunk?”
“Kinda. What’s it to you?”
I’m not in the frame of mind to deal with this right now. “You haven’t had more than a beer in ten years and you pick tonight to get wasted? What the fuck, Noah.”
A long stretch of silence happens, long enough that I check to see if he ended the call. Nope. Time ticks away on the screen of my iPhone.
“I saw Maren,” I hear an eternity later.
He never talks about her, so this is big news. “I told you to stop watchin’ YouTube. Why you wanna torture yourself like that?”
“She was here––with that dickhead she’s datin’…came to visit Rowdy. He’s gettin’ worse.”
Ah shit. Rowdy is not only Noah’s business partner, but also stepped in as a surrogate father when Noah’s parents were killed in a car accident. It just so happens he’s also Maren’s grandfather.
“This might make you feel better. I proposed and Stella told me she wants to think about it.”
Silence again. Then I hear it––the laughter. It starts slow but picks up speed pretty quickly. “Are you shittin’ me?”
“I wish I was, brotha. I wish I was.” I run a hand through my hair and tug at the ends. At this rate, the woman is gonna make me bald.
His laughter dies down. “What happened?”
“Fuck, if I know. I got a nice ring and everything, made it all romantic and shit and you know I don’t do romance.”
“Mmmm.”
“I love her,” rips out of me. It feels like if I don’t tell someone, I might just explode from the pressure of keeping it down. “I love her more than I love myself. I love her so damn much I don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t love me back.”
I’m in serious danger of turning into my father is what runs through my mind. Noah doesn’t need to know that though.
“Whut? What do you mean you don’t know if she loves you back? Didn’t she tell you?”
The question embarrasses me. It takes me a minute to answer. “Not yet.”
“That’s weird. I saw the way she was lookin’ at ya at J’s place…you told her and she said nothin’?”
I hesitate before answering. Don’t know why, but I do. “I haven’t told her yet.”
A long, tired exhale comes through the phone. A funny feeling in my gut tells me I may have screwed the pooch on this one.
“You didn’t tell her.” It’s not a question. I get another loud exhale. “Well, no shit she wasn’t jumpin’ up and down at the prospect of marryin’ a dumb motherfucker like you.”
“I didn’t wanna scare her away. She’s real skittish about it.”
“If love scares her, then she ain’t ready for it. Go tell her you love her. Tell he
r everything you told me and she’ll be alright.”
His words get inside of me and germinate. Thing is, I want to tell her. Hell, I’ve been wanting to shout it from the top of the Empire State Building for a good long time now. Letting her take the lead on this has been absolute fucking torture, and I’m done with it. I’m sick and tired of waiting for her to say it first. Tomorrow she’s gonna hear it––whether she’s ready for it or not.
My black mood parts, and I remember I’m not the only one hurting. “Now why can’t you do that for yourself?”
“Not the same thing,” he grunts. “I hurt her the worst way you can hurt a woman…this is my punishment.”
There’s no point trying to talk sense into him when he’s in this state. I wonder if he’ll even remember this conversation tomorrow.
“Do me a favor, if you feel like drinkin’ again, call me first?”
“Yeah…’kay,” he mutters, half-asleep already.
“Love you, boo.”
“Mmm.”
