Page 147 of Secret Paths

For once, Peter does not smile. He does not soften the moment with humour, or make it easier for me to bear by turning it sideways. He looks down at my hand in his and slides the ring onto my finger with such careful tenderness that my throat closes.

The ring settles in place.

I stare at it.

My hand looks like mine.

Still mine.

Only now there is proof on it that I have chosen something I once thought would take too much from me.

Peter lifts my hand and kisses the ring.

Then my knuckles.

Then the inside of my wrist.

“I love you,” he says.

I know.

I know it in the way he touches me. In the quiet after my hard days. In the fact that he still buys fruit pastilles sometimes but now pretends they are for himself. In the space he gives me without making me earn it.

Still, hearing it now makes my chest ache.

“I love you too.”

His eyes close for a moment.

When they open, whatever restraint he has been holding on to is thinner.

I reach for him first.

His mouth meets mine. His hand settles at my waist, warm and steady through the thin fabric of my blouse.

My whole body reacts.

His thumb stills.

“Dinner,” he murmurs.

“Can wait.”

“I worked hard on that.”

“I proposed. I outrank cottage pie.”

“Strong case.”

“I usually have one.”

He kisses the corner of my mouth. “Upstairs?”

I take his hand.

We leave the cottage pie on the worktop and the flowers leaning in their jam jar and the wine half-drunk on the table.

Halfway up the stairs, Peter stops.