AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“But I didn’t care,” he goes on, smiling up at me. “I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now, because you’re the only thing I see. And I’d kind of like to keep on seeing you forever, if that’s okay with you?”
My heart has started up again, but it somehow seems to have swollen to at least twice its normal size, which makes it impossible for me to do anything other than just stand there struggling for words as Jack opens the box in his hand to reveal the most dazzling emerald ring I’ve ever seen in my life. Not that I’ve seen many emerald engagement rings in my life, you understand. This is the very first, in fact. But I don’t need to be an expert to tell you that even if I live for another hundred years, I will never see anything even half as precious as this one. Because this one’s about to be mine.
“It’s ethically sourced,” says Jack seriously — a statement that’s just sohimthat it makes me burst out laughing; a laugh that’s instantly mixed with the tears which are suddenly running down my cheeks.
“Wait,” I say as he scrambles to his feet. “Um, just so we’re clear: youareasking me to marry you, aren’t you? This isn’t just… I don’t know, a really extravagant gift or something? Because youdidjust announce you’d bought us both a log-cabin community, so I just want to be sure I’m not getting the wrong end of the stick here. Because that would besolike me, and— ”
“Of course I’m asking you to marry me,” Jack interrupts, grinning. “Did I not say that? Oh shit, I didn’t did I? Sorry. I knew I should have practiced this first.”
He starts to get back down on one knee, but I dart forward to stop him, almost falling flat on my face in the process.
“Don’t,” I say, still doing that weird laugh/sob thing, which I’m going to have to edit out of my memories of this moment, along with the cow shit on my shoe. “You didn’t need to practice. It was perfect. Truly.”
“Really?” His face lights up with exactly the kind of smile that made me fall in love with him in the first place. “Thank God for that. So, does that mean you’re saying yes, then?”
He pulls me towards him and takes the ring out of the box.
“Yes!” I say, laughing. “Yes, of course I am! Do you really need to ask?”
He slides the ring onto my finger, and I stare down at it, hardly daring to believe that it’s mine.He’smine. And, for once in my life, the reality is even better than anything I could possibly have imagined.
“I want to do this together, Emerald,” Jack says, suddenly serious. “Not just this project, but all of it. Life. The whole thing. Because I love you so much, and I couldn’t do any of it without you. It would be like having half a life. You and me against the world, right?”
Then he takes me in his arms and kisses me in a way that feels like the end of a movie, but which I know now is actually just the very start. It might not have happened exactly the way I’d imagined it, but it was the perfect proposal, mud and all; and as I kiss him back, I’m not thinking about my wedding dress, or my hair, or even about the stupid cow pat — which I definitely haven’t managed to wipe off as successfully as I thought I had.
No, I’m thinking about him. Aboutthis. This precious moment, in which everything in my life has finally come together, and in which everything is just as perfect as it can possibly be.
Until, all of a sudden, it isn’t.
Because, as Jack and I walk hand-in-hand back down the hill, his knees covered in mud and my feet still caked in cow dung, my phone beeps with a message.
I almost don’t bother to look at it, not wanting to ruin the moment. But then I think about Frankie, who’s been waiting impatiently all day to find out what Jack’s big surprise is, and I pull the phone out of my pocket, ready to snap a quick photo of the ring to send her.
That’s when I see it.
The message has been sent from an unknown number, and it contains just three short words, which make my perfect moment shatter into pieces around me:
DON’T TRUST JACK.
Chapter 2
Emerald’s Updated List of Things to Do Before the Wedding:
Get engaged.
Go wedding dress shopping — one of those places with free champagne, if possible.
Find out if it’s possible to completely re-grow hair in the space of a few months. Didn’t someone do that in Harry Potter? Or is that bones I’m thinking of?
Join the gym. Surely there must be at least one gym near Heather Bay that welcomes slightly — okayvery— clumsy people, who’re allergic to exercise?
Or maybe take up running instead? How hard can running be, anyway?
Ask Frankie to be my maid of honor.
Ask Bella McGowan to make the wedding cake.
Figure out who’s sending me anonymous messages telling me not to trust my fiance, and why.
