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But while I had always loved my siblings, there was also the sense that when I was with them, I faded into the background. Each of them had such intense personalities. Matthew and Lea were classic Type A control freaks. Kate was a creative, Marie was the eccentric, and Joni the life of the party.
I was just Frankie. The quiet kid who liked books. The girl who taught instead of did. The lady whose only real purpose was to take care of her daughter.
No one had ever seen me for more until I’d met this man.
When I managed to turn back, Xavier’s eyes were fathomless blue depths, full of sorrow, yes, but even more heartbreakingly, compassion. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I understand.”
I thought of his parents. A mother who died young, who worked so hard to provide for him but, by his own admission, hadn’t been particularly emotive. A father who at best was absent, at worst abusive. The way he had spent most of his life being labeled a misfit bastard or else the rebel chef.
Pigeonholing was the same no matter how much money you had. Just as insidious. Just as stifling.
I thought of my own parents, one dead, the other an addict trying to make a career out of shaming her own daughter to the press.
We weren’t really so different, he and I.
“But Ces?”
I hummed. “Yeah?”
“Some of us can choose different,” Xavier said. “If there’s anything I’m learning these days, it’s that.”
“Oh, Xavi. Not everyone has your brand of self-confidence. Not everyone has your ability to change.”
“I’ll teach you,” he told me, tilting my chin so I was looking at him. “I’ll teach you every day until you see what I see.”
By the time he was finished speaking, I could hardly breathe.
“Starting,” he continued quietly, “with this.”
Then, before I could say a word, he shifted so he was fully on one knee, reached into his pants pocket, and pulled out a box.
And when I saw it, I couldn’t breathe.
“I should have done this right the first time,” Xavier said. “But since you’re giving me a second chance, I won’t mess it up again.”
Any woman would know this box. Small and black velvet, the kind that made no noise when he used his other hand to open it and once again reveal the most exquisite ring I’d ever seen in my life.
I stared at the setting for a long time, taking a few moments to appreciate its beauty in a way I hadn’t done the first time he’d shown it to me. I’d almost forgotten the way the delicate cluster of gems, rather than a solitaire, fit together just so. They were set on a delicately filigreed white gold band, sparkling even in the dim basement light.
And they were pink. The color of the perfect blush of an ingenue’s cheeks or the shade of a London sky right after the sun had set.
The color of camellias.
Of longing.
Of us.
“Francesca Zola,” Xavier said in a hushed voice, barely above a whisper. “Since the day we met, you changed me. You changed me with your smile and your kindness. You changed me with the way you love our daughter and the way I know you’ll love our son. You changed me with every iron-strong, quietly ruthless, breathtakingly beautiful part of your soul, and I will never be the same for it. You beg for me, babe. Well, I’m on my knees for you.”
“But you don’t get on your knees for anyone,” I pointed out with a shy smile.
That earned me a grin that positively lit up the room.
“I’d stay on my knee forever,” Xavier said just as his left dimple appeared, “if you’d answer just one question. Francesca Zola, will you marry me?”
TWENTY
Now it was my turn to stare for what seemed like minutes. I stared at the ring. I stared at him. I stared at the rest of the room like it really might evaporate and I’d be sucked back into my bedroom upstairs, ripped away from a moment that was too beautiful not to be a dream.
