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He stares down at me with languid eyes. “This bed fucking sucks.”
I play with his hair. “Did you think about me, while you were lying in it?”
He runs his thumb along the side of my face. “Fuck yeah.”
My fingers in his hair stop. “You did?”
He shoots me a look. “Why do you think I always had the door locked when you came over?”
With wide eyes, I reply, “Because you were… thinking about me?”
“And doing other things.”
“What other things?”
“What do you think a guy does when he’s obsessed with a girl? Who’s right next door, laughing with his little sister while gabbing about the most useless things anyone’s ever talked about.”
I smack his shoulder. “Hey, not the –”
“I jerked myself off,” he says, cutting me off.
My momentary ire goes away. “Oh.”
“To your voice. To your laugh. To the cotton candy scent that you always left behind in the hallway.”
This time my oh is silent and gasp-y.
He smirks. “I might be the only person who’s ever jerked off to Chanel’s fall line of handbags.”
I bite my lip. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Me neither.”
“I can’t believe you saw me a year before I saw you.”
“Probably just like I couldn’t believe that the girl I saw was the same girl who started stalking me a year later.”
“I can’t believe you came to my dorm room because you wanted to get me pregnant for yourself and not for revenge,” I continue.
“Again, probably same as you wanted me to breed you a year later. For yourself and not for revenge.”
I shake my head, taking his beautiful face in. “We’re soulmates, aren’t we?”
His playful expression goes away and an intense look takes over his face.
His eyes.
My heart starts to pound something fierce, afraid that our fragile happiness is going to be broken any second now. But before I can ask him what’s wrong, he lets go of me and comes down on his knees on the floor.
I prop myself up on my elbows – soon I won’t be able to do that with how fast I’m growing – and ask, “What… What are you doing?”
He stares at me for a second or two before breathing deep. “I don’t have fancy words. I don’t even know if I could ever find them, even if I went looking, but…” He clears his throat. “But I want to do this right. For the first time ever, I want to do something because I want to do it. Bravely and without fear.” Then, “Well, maybe with fear but still.”
Another deep breath later, “You already know that I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you and I’ve hurt you more than any man has ever hurt the woman he loves. You’ve seen my ugly parts and if I have any beauty in me, you’ve seen that too. I’ve broken a lot of promises while I’ve kept the others. I’ve made you cry. I’ve made you laugh. I’ve scared you and made you feel safe. I’ve broken your heart and tried in my twisted way to heal it. And knowing all that, knowing how fucked up I am and how far I still have to go, I’m asking you to marry me. I’m asking you to be my wife, and Tempest, I’m not going to make any promises to you because I don’t want to break them. I’m not going to say that I won’t make you cry because I probably will. I’m not going to say that I’ll hide my ugly parts because again, I’ll probably fail to do that as well. But I will say that I will always be there for you. I will burn down the world for you. I will kill for you. I will lie on broken glass and walk on grenades for you. I will live and breathe and die for you.” He glances down at my belly. “And for our babies.” Looking up, he asks, in the most vulnerable display of emotions, “Will you marry me?”
He's blurry right now because my eyes are filled with tears.
But still I see something sitting in the palm of his hand.
A blue velvet box.
I have no idea where he produced it from or when. All I know is that it’s sitting there, and slowly, he opens it to reveal the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen.
A princess-cut diamond on a white gold band with two little diamonds flanking it.
And I immediately know that those two diamonds are our babies. That he thought of them when he bought it.
“When did you…”
“The day I went to your father.”
“Y-you mean, after you were released from jail?”
“Yeah.”
“B-but I’d already asked for –”
He shakes his head once. “I just… wanted to do something right. For once.” Then, “I tricked you into marrying me, without ever asking you or giving you a ring or doing all those traditional things I know you dreamed of. So I bought this ring, knowing that I probably would never be able to give it to you, and that it would burn a hole in my pocket for the rest of my life. Which is…”
