I gasp in a wet, shaky breath, trying to steady the tears.
“Carly Drake,” he says, and every part of me trembles when he says my name like that, like it matters, like he’s about to ruinme with whatever follows. “I love you. I love the way you make my daughter feel safe and loved and accepted. I love the way you challenge me. I love the way you scream during football, the way you light up when I look at your sketches, the way you crawled into my heart and decided to live there. I love the way you see me, even when I don’t deserve it.”
His voice breaks again.
“I want you in my home, in my bed, in my life. Not as Penny’s nanny. Not as my designer. Not as my fake date to a wedding, or my secret, or as a regret. I want you as mine. Fully.”
I can’t see him clearly anymore, and no amount of blinking makes it clearer. The choked little sobs coming out of me are embarrassing and gross and wet, but I don’t care.
“Marry me,” he says. “Please. Let me love you properly. Let me fight for you properly. Let me spend the rest of my life making sure you never wonder if you’re worth choosing.”
For one suspended, impossible second, all I hear is my own gasped and choked breathing.
This is insane.
It’s fast.
It’s reckless and terrifying and completely ridiculous.
But to me, it feels less like a leap and more like finally admitting I have been falling with him from the beginning.
I think about the interview in Colorado Springs. The clean, bright, lonely future waiting an hour and a half south, where nothing has had time to hurt me yet. But then I look at theblurred image of Grayson, at him on one knee, terrified and trying anyway.
At the ring he picked.
At the door where Penelope is almost certainly pressed against the wood, listening and buzzing with adrenaline.
It’s so easy.
“Okay,” I whisper.
Grayson goes utterly still.
I nod, tears spilling faster now, fully ugly-crying. “Yes.”
His face nearly relaxes, somewhere between shock and relief.“Yeah?” he asks, and he sounds so young for a second, so disbelieving, that it catches me off guard.
“Yes, you idiot,” I laugh, but it sounds more like a sob. “I’ll marry you.”
He makes a sound like the air has been punched out of him, then he’s on his feet and the box is somewhere I can’t see, one of his arms wrapping around my waist before I even have time to breathe and the other pulling me in by the nape of my neck.
He drags me into the tightest hug of my life, half lifting me, pressing me into his chest. The familiar scent of him surrounds me, engulfs me, and god, it feels like coming home.
My purse slides off my shoulder and hits the floor. My keys drop next. I don’t care. I bury my face in his chest and clutch the back of his shirt like I can anchor myself there.
“I love you,” he says into my hair, his voice thick and half broken. “I love you, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I whimper.
His hands move, cupping my cheeks, and I barely catch a glimpse of his slightly damp face before he kisses me.
A raspy noise slips from him, and my lips part beneath his, letting him in. It’s not his normal achingly sweet or desperately hungry kiss — it’s more than that. It’s full of so much emotion that it alone threatens to take my feet out from under me.
He kisses me until the kitchen door flies open, then reluctantly lets me go, quickly wiping at the corner of his eye and huffing amusedly as his daughter launches across the room at me.
“Carly!”
I barely have time to brace before she collides with my legs, wrapping both arms around me so hard that I stagger back a couple of steps.
