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There is no moving forward without you—not if I ever want to be happy again.
I’ll spend the rest of my life loving you so hard you’ll never feel alone again.
“At least read the inside of the band,” he said.
With shaking fingers, she took the ring from his hand. Cold water dripped on her fingers as she tilted the band with the very big diamond centerpiece in the candlelight so that she could read it.
The engraving was one word.
Yes.
“It’s what I would have said if I wasn’t ignoring my feelings. If I didn’t have my head so far up my ass I couldn’t see sunlight. I wasn’t wrong, Addi. Not about all of it. Life is about being present. But we don’t have to let it cost us a future we deserve. The family we both want.” He shook his head, a tender smile pulling his mouth. “It’s not an accident that you’re in my life and I’m in yours.”
Tears stung her nose as she continued staring at the ring. Everything she thought she’d lost was being handed to her, and it was almost too much to process.
“I love you, Addison Abrams.” Bran stood and then lowered to one knee at her side of the booth. “If your proposal hasn’t expired yet, I accept.”
Bran only thought he knew how Addison felt when she proposed. Now, he knew. Knew what it was like to leap without a safety net and risk everything. All the flowers, delivered food and begging in the world wouldn’t win her back. Only baring his soul and telling her the truth would. At least he hoped it would.
He was at her mercy. Addison could truly ruin him. Could turn him into a fool if she told him no.
She couldn’t tell him no.
She won’t.
He was praying and hoping and wishing that she believed him. He loved her. More than anything. He’d been too stubborn to see it sooner. The blinders he wore to protect himself had handicapped him in the end. Now all he could do was kneel before her and hope he wasn’t too late. That she didn’t instantly write him off. That there was some scrap of love for him still left inside her. That he hadn’t destroyed everything they’d built.
She was holding the ring—a good sign—but her face was unreadable. He could hear his own heartbeats, so close together he lost count at four. After what seemed like an eternity, she finally looked at him.
Bright blue eyes lifted her rosy cheeks into the barest hint of a smile. It was like the morning he’d watched the sun rise over the vineyards behind his parents’ house. The very moment he’d come to the conclusion that he loved her, and had been loving her the entire time they were together. The moment he’d felt at once free and devastated because he had no idea how to win her back.
His beautiful, brave girl clasped his face with both hands and kissed him solidly on the mouth. He kissed her back, feeling the competing warmth of her lips and the coolness of the metal band of the ring in her grip against his cheek—but mostly relief. So much relief.
He ended the kiss and, before she could rethink her answer, slipped the ring on her left finger. Clasping both her hands in his, he became aware of the low echo of applause around them and the blur in his eyes from an unshed tear or two of his own. Her next words released them.
“I love you, too.” Her grin was wide, her eyes misted over. Then she was kissing him again and damming the words he was going to say in his throat.
That was fine by him. Those four words were the only words he needed to hear until the day they said I do.
