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“Right now, I am seventy-five percent stress, but as soon as the showcase is over, I think I can be seventy-five percent fun.” Hannah bit her lip, and Levi leaned down to nip it.
“Can I help with the fun?”
“What are you proposing?”
“We’ve never been on a Ferris wheel together,” he said. “Come with me. After the showcase.”
The Ferris wheel clicked into motion, swaying them gently. Hannah clutched at the bar.
“I shouldn’t have let Miriam book the rides. I don’t know whether anyone checked the safety record of this wheel and this operator,” she squeaked. Blue rumbled a laugh.
“Stop freaking out,” he said. “We’re probably not going to die on this carnival ride. And if we do, what better way to go than together, on the Carrigan’s front lawn?”
She glared at him, and he grinned. He wrapped her hand in both of his and brought it to his mouth in a kiss. She broke eye contact, and he looked around them, around at the world beneath them, as the car made its way slowly up over their one hundred sixty acres. He could see past the farm to the wilderness of the Adirondacks beyond, and he breathed deeply.
This was home, here, in this place and with this woman. He hadn’t ever thought it could be, but somehow it was. He looked down at their still-clasped hands, where Hannah was running her free finger over his forearms, tracing scars.
“Most of these are from hot grease, but that,” he said as she got to a particularly long one, “is a long story involving a jungle, which I’ll tell you after we have been married for about fifty years, because it makes me sound like a total doofus.”
“I used to know all your scars,” she said, “the one on your chin that you got when we were four and playing fort. The line behind your ear from sledding. The time your leg—”
“Oh, we don’t talk about that one. It still makes me woozy to think about.”
“Imagine how your parents must have felt.”
He shuddered. “Does it make you sad? That my skin is so different than it was when I left?”
She thought about his question for a long minute, then shook her head. “We are both in new skin, yours just shows more, on the outside. I look forward to spending hours and hours getting to know this new skin. I get to be naked with a whole new you.”
“Hours and hours, huh?” He took one of his hands off hers so he could wind it around her curls. She leaned her forehead against his and then squeaked when the chair rocked beneath them.
“We should get off this Ferris wheel and get started on this naked thing,” she said. “Or just be on the ground. That would be fine.”
“What if we got started on the whole rest of our lives thing?” he asked, pulling a box out of his pocket.
He felt her stop breathing. He really hoped that was a good kind of stopped breathing.
The box he opened held Cass’s ring. Every now and then, Cass had let them play in her jewelry box, and Hannah always put this ring on her too-small fingers and said she was going to have it someday when she got married.
She looked up at Levi with huge eyes. All his cockiness was gone, and he knew his whole heart was in his eyes.
“Where did you get this?” she whispered. “I looked for it after the funeral, but it was gone.”
“Cass gave it to Elijah with the napkin. She must have known I’d be back someday and would want to ask you to marry me.”
“You haven’t, though,” she pointed out.
“I haven’t what?”
“Asked me to marry you,” she said, and he gulped. “You’re not going to get out of this the easy way.”
“Hannah Naomi Rosenstein, you are the only person I have ever loved, or will ever love. You are the most extraordinary, brilliant, fascinating, competent woman I’ve ever met, and I know you could choose to spend your life with anyone. If you choose me, I promise I will do everything in my power to be worthy of that choice. I will be your partner, your teammate, your ride-or-die. I will coax you into adventures and listen to you when you tell me what you need and want. I want to get turned on every time I see you with a clipboard and help you execute the most elaborate possible schemes. I want what my parents have, with you. Will you marry me?”
“Levi Blue Matthews, I would marry you this very moment if we had a rabbi handy with a ketubah. You are always going to be my partner and my ride-or-die. I could love someone who wasn’t you, but I don’t want to. I want you.”
Levi finally, finally let out the breath he was holding and put the ring on Hannah’s finger, his hands shaking.
“Please do not drop my aunt Cass’s antique diamond ring down a Ferris wheel, Blue. I’m pretty sure it would be a bad omen.”
