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“Oh my God,” I said.
“You can take some time if you need to think about it,” he said, but he was beaming up at me, and he reached and wiped the tears from my cheeks with a cold thumb.
“Shut up, I can’t believe you. You’re on your knees in the snow, proposing to me in a fucking cemetery, when we’re already married. The fuck’s wrong with you?”
“Yeah, and you’re crying about it. So? Whattaya say?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. This was ridiculous. Rhys was ridiculous.
Also the most wonderful fucking thing that had ever happened to me.
I tugged at his hand to bring him back up beside me.
“Yeah, of course. Of course I choose you, you idiot. I always have. Fuck.”
“Sweetest damn thing I ever heard,” Rhys said. And he kissed me, both of us clinging to each other, our cold lips warming as the snow fell.
“Wait,” I said, as we piled through the door, giddy and freezing after making out so long in the cemetery that our asses froze. “Is this why Caleb stole our dog?”
“Uh, yeah.” Rhys sounded guilty. “Well, I kinda had this whole thing in my head with rose petals and I was afraid Max would eat them, but then also I thought you would think I was ridiculous—”
“You are ridiculous.”
“—If I got all those rose petals, so I changed my mind, but Caleb was already on his way. Then I had this fear that you’d freak out over me proposing again, or go into a guilt spiral about forgetting our anniversary—”
“Hey!” I smacked his arm. “So you thought, what, that you didn’t want to subject Max to my potential hysteria?”
“Oh no, just saying. Actually, I think Caleb kinda wanted to take him home in the hopes that he would teach Solo how to be a real dog. Besides.” He unzipped my jacket. “I thought if you said yes to marrying me, this way I could fuck you on every surface without Max getting underfoot.”
“That’s a much better reason.”
“Yeah.” Rhys sighed, and leaned in to kiss me again.
We got out of our winter gear, and Rhys was buzzing with energy. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. He pulled a bottle of champagne out of the fridge and brandished it at me with a grin. “I was optimistic.”
I couldn’t help but smile. He poured us champagne and handed me the glasses. Then he snagged my sleeve in one hand and the bottle in the other and led me upstairs to the same room where we’d spent the night after we got married.
Everything felt different now.
“Champagne in bed.” He looked delighted, and I slid in next to him, handing him his glass. He clinked with me. “Thank you, Matty. For saying yes.”
There was something about him when he was like this. So sincere and open and happy. He was magnetic.
You put that smile on his face. You’re what’s making him this happy.
“Thank you. For asking again,” I said. “I can’t believe you . . .” I stopped myself and took a deep breath. “I’m so happy you still want to be married to me.”
Rhys’s face told me everything I needed to know. He kissed me softly, and we sipped our champagne.
“I have an idea but I don’t know how you’ll feel about it,” he said.
I tried not to feel dread at that and failed.
“The first time we got married meant everything to me,” he said. “But I’ve wondered whether part of what made it not feel quite real to you, and made it so I didn’t think much about what it meant to be married, was that we didn’t do anything to mark the occasion. What would you think of having a wedding this time? Not a big foofy deal or anything,” he said at my widening eyes. “Just a celebration. A little party. Get-together. Thing.”
I guzzled the rest of my champagne and reached over Rhys to grab the bottle and refill my glass.
“Is that a very joyful yes?” he teased.
“Um.”
“We don’t have to, baby,” he said. “But I was thinking how nice it’d be to have everyone together. You could meet my family, like we talked about.”
I’d spent the night after one of my sessions with Susan sobbing in Rhys’s arms, trying to explain the tangle of my feelings about meeting his family. The dread and the longing and the fear that, after all these years, another family would reject me. Rhys had understood, and we’d compromised. He’d agreed to leave the timeline open, and I’d agreed to work toward meeting them.
“Caleb and Theo could be our best men,” Rhys went on. “We could have a big barbecue in the backyard, have some music. You could invite Imari and her wife. Hey, Grin could come!”
I took a sip of my champagne, felt the delicate burn of bubbles along the roof of my mouth.
