Page 145 of Secret Paths

“I know you know.” My voice wobbles, which is rude of it. “That is the point.”

He stays very still.

Letting me say it.

“I spent a long time thinking loving someone meant waiting for the part where I had to hand pieces of myself over. Space. Peace. Routine. The right to be difficult without it becoming a referendum on whether the whole thing worked.”

Peter’s jaw tightens.

I step closer.

“But you never asked for that. You just learned where the mugs are. And which evenings not to talk at me for ten minutes. You learned my life without trying to take it from me.”

The kitchen is very quiet now.

The oven clicks behind him.

Rain taps lightly against the window.

I hold out the box.

“So I am asking you something, and I am asking it here, in my kitchen, because this is where I mean it most.”

Peter presses his lips together.

I see him trying to stay still for me.

Trying not to rush me.

Trying not to rescue me from the difficulty of saying the thing I want to say.

“I want you in my life on purpose,” I say. “Not hidden. Not half-explained. Not fitted into the gaps when I am brave enough. Publicly. Deliberately. Legally, if we are being dramatic.”

His laugh is silent.

Mine nearly is too.

“I want shared breakfasts. I want quiet evenings. I want you at this table and beside me at village events where Alexandra pretends not to plan our future in real time. I want all of that without either of us disappearing.”

I look down at the rings, then back at him.

“Will you marry me?”

Peter does not answer.

For one terrible second, my medical training provides several unhelpful explanations for why a human male might become entirely motionless.

Then he steps forward, takes my face in both hands and kisses me.

Hard.

The box presses between us. My elbow knocks against the worktop.

I do not care.

His mouth is warm and shaking against mine, and when he pulls back, his forehead stays against mine.

“Yes,” he says.