AllFreeNovel
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“The choice is yours. It’s always yours, sweetheart.” He steps forward, closing what’s left of the distance between us. “But, for the record, I’m not at all upset about you being pregnant. It was going to happen eventually. Now or in a few years is semantics to me.”
“I’m not upset, either.” A smile creeps onto my face.
Everything with us is an eventuality. Him keeping my things at his place because eventually it would become my home, too. Him taking Nan to bingo every Tuesday evening when I’m still at work because eventually she’ll be his nan, too.
“So, we’re on the same page, right?” My smile broadens and he adds, “Momma?”
“You know, I was all yours already.”
“Now I’ve really sealed the deal.”
“Good luck telling Phyllis you knocked up her only granddaughter outside of marriage.”
“Funny you should say that. When I took her to bingo last week and asked her what she wanted for Christmas—” I shut him up with a kiss.
Ever since we moved in together, Nan has been dropping all the hints about a great-grandchild before she, quote, ‘pops her clogs’. Leif did a great job of giving her the run around at first. It didn’t last long until she had him sussed for what he was doing.
“I love you, Nova,” he murmurs against my lips.
When he lifts me up onto the vanity, I press my lips to the blue and purple swirled star he had added to the centre of the compass over his heart.
“Love you, too, big guy,” I tell him, tracing my fingers over the leaves trailing to his shoulders.
“You make me so damn happy,” Leif says, peppering kisses all the way up to my cheek before he spins me to face him. “I can’t imagine having this life with anybody else. It’s so much better than anything I thought I would have. You’re nothing I could’ve dreamed of or ever imagined for myself.”
He takes a step back, taking a small black box from his coat pocket. The serious set of his face gives him away instantly. Trying as hard as I can to hold my emotions at bay, my hormones have other ideas on the matter, and before he even sinks to one knee, I’m a blubbering mess.
“I had plans to do this at Christmas. I’d even asked Phyllis’s permission.” His hazel eyes beam back at me. “Then I thought that with the pregnancy test, it would be better to wait. I didn’t want you to believe that the baby is the reason I’m asking you. It’s not. I’ve had this ring since Laiken and Kami visited in August.”
“That’s before I moved in with you.”
He nods. “That first night in Budapest, I told Laiken you were the woman I was going to marry. I’ve never once changed my mind about that. From the moment I first saw you in Heathrow Terminal 3, drinking that god awful wine that made you twist your face all funny, I knew you were it for me.”
I can hardly breathe when he opens the box and holds it out to me. The most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen is nestled in the middle—a lone sparkling diamond with a few minuscule ones clustered around it, dotting the gold band. It looks like a bursting star when the flicker of the fire above us hits it.
“Leif…”
“You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. A star that makes everything brighter, and I don’t ever want to live without you in my life. So, Cassidy Emelia Morgan, this is me asking you to be my third perfectly good thing once more.” Taking the ring from the box, he holds out his hand to me and waits for me to take it before he asks, “Will you be my forever sweetheart and marry me?”
Not a hint of a grin crosses his face when I lower myself to him and push my finger into the ring he’s holding, before I wrap my arms around his shoulders and crush my lips to his.
My heart is beating out of my chest, my tears cascading down my face, the happiest of sobs making it impossible to tell him yes as I kiss him again and again like a silly teenager that hasn’t quite spent enough time practising on her arm.
I’m a bloody mess when he pulls back and cups my face. His smile grows wider and wider as I nod.
“Is that a yes?”
I nod again, trying to control my breaths so I can tell him, “Yes.”
“Forever?”
“I’ll be yours beyond forever, Leif McAllister.”
THE END
