He tilted his head toward me. “Need you.”
I looked at him.
"That's the first time you've said that," I said.
"I know."
"You're not a man who says things like that."
"No." He pushed off the wall and came into the room fully, stopped a few feet away. "Which is why I'm only saying it once before I say the next thing."
I waited.
"I want to marry you," he said.
The room went very quiet.
"Gage."
"I know how long it's been."
"Three weeks."
"Four, roughly." He held my gaze. "Doesn't change it."
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Looked at the bed, the windows, the last of the light on the pasture. "That's—you can't just —" I turned back to him. "People don't do that."
"My parents did."
I stared at him. "What?"
"My dad proposed to my mother eight days after they met." He said it matter-of-factly, the way he said everything. "She told him he was insane. He told her he'd wait. She made him wait six months and then said yes." Something moved in his expression, quiet and certain. "He was right and she knew it and the waiting was just her making sure he was sure."
I didn't say anything.
"I'm sure," he said.
"You've known me for four weeks."
"I knew in the parking lot."
"That's not—Gage, that's not how —"
"Millie." Not impatient. Just steady. "I'm not asking you to say yes tonight. I'm telling you what I want so you know what this is. So there's no ambiguity." He held my gaze. "This isn't me keeping you around because of the contract. This isn't me being good to you because you're carrying something for me. I want you at that table for the next thirty years. I want you in this room. I want to be your husband and I want that baby to have my name and then I want to do it again if you'll let me."
My heart was doing something genuinely alarming.
"You're serious," I said.
"I don't say things I don't mean."
I knew that. Four weeks and I already knew that completely. Gage Holt did not perform sincerity. He either said a thing or he didn't, and when he said it he meant it down to the bone.
"I have to think about it," I said.
"I know."
"I'm not—it's not a no."
