At least I’m already on my knees.
I take a deep breath and clasp both her hands in mine.
“Millie…” I trail off because I realize I don’t know it. How could I not know it? “Baby, what’s your middle name?”
She grimaces. “Agnes.”
My brows leap. “Agnes?Really?”What the hell were her parents thinking?
Millie wrinkles her nose. “It’s bad. Awful, really.”
I don’t argue. “Millie Agnes Delacroix—”
“It’s, um…” She bites her lip and wrinkles her nose again. “Actually, it’s Mildred.”
Dios misericordioso.
“Wow.” I don’t mean to say it out loud, but… “Wow.”
She nods. “Tell me about it.”
I blink. “Your initials spellMAD,”I blurt, then my voice drops with awe. “This explains so much.”
Her brow executes a severe arch.
I look at her glowering at me, and I feel a smile that comes straight from my soul transform my face.
I’m going to spend the rest of my life driving her crazy.
“Mildred Agnes Delacroix.” As the words leave my tongue, I realize it is the most beautiful name in the world. Because it’s hers. “I fell for you at a soccer game when you wouldn’t even look me in the eye, even though I knew you were checking me out—”
“I was no—”
I stop her mouth with my palm. “Let me finish. This is nerve wracking as shit.” The glare she gives me is the most beautiful thing. Ever. “Then I found myself in the middle of your busy, full, crazy life, and I never want to leave.”
The glare vanishes until there’s nothing but her smooth, ivory brow and her soft blue eyes.
“I’ve watched you do the impossible—and do it with endless love and patience. And humor. I want a share of that. Of all of it. The responsibilities. The rewards. And most of all, the love.” I squeeze her hands and uncover her mouth, but it’s all I can do not to cover it again with mine. “I’ll give you a ring tomorrow, but today I’m asking. Will you marry me?”
Her eyes are wide, hopeful, but still scared. She holds up the pregnancy test. “Don’t you want to know first? Before you do this? I mean, maybe I’m wrong and—”
I snatch the box from her, turn and chuck it into Abuela’s blue flowered wastebasket. I whirl back to meet her gaze.
“I don’t care if you’re pregnant or not. I want to marry you.”
She glances at the trashcan with a frown. “That was thirteen dollars.”
I shake my head. “Don’t care about that either. I asked you a question,linda.”
Maybe I should be nervous that she hasn’t answered, but I’m not. She can be nervous. I’m sure.
Millie bites her bottom lip. “You want to marry me?”
“Yes,boba,I want to marry you.”
Blink. Blink. “Even if we have to spend the next ten years raising Harry, Mattie, and Emmett?”
“¿Estás bromeando?Especially if we get to spend the next ten years raising them,” I promise. “And the next twenty or thirty raising our own.”
