Page 9 of For Your Consideration

“He’s not harassing me.” Quinn patted my back. I ignored them.

“What’s his problem?” Oli asked, tilting his chin toward me and earning a glare from me that didn’t even make him flinch. I missed the early days in our friendship when they were all a little uncertain about me.

Just as I picked up my drink, my phone went off. I looked down to see a message from Knight in our private chat that we almost never used.

Knight

Can you go somewhere quiet?

I held up my phone as the conversation went on around me. Someone was probably making fun of me. I went into the office, closing the door to muffle the music, and dialed his number.

“What’s wrong?” I asked the moment the ringing stopped.

“Nothing,” Knight answered. He knew I wasn’t good with phone etiquette; thankfully everyone was used to it now. “I just wanted you to know that I got the ring.”

“Okay.” I frowned, waiting for more.

I knew he was flying out to London to go see a jeweler. It was the one his mum had commented on when they were looking through magazines at the hospital on one of her last days before she passed away from cancer. As Knight had only been thirteen, I wasn’t sure how he even remembered the name, but he mentioned to me that he wanted to get a ring made there one day if he ever decided to get married.

It was another way he could honor his mum.

“For Quinn.” He waited but I didn’t say anything. “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

“Of course you are,” I said after a moment.

Knight let out a laugh. “You’re supposed to say something more encouraging.”

“You’ve been obsessed with her since you met her, so this isn’t a surprise.”

“That’s true. It’s been the best year of my life.” He paused. “You don’t think it’s too fast?” He wasn’t doubting his connection with Quinn, but he probably just wanted to hear my thoughts, of which I had none.

“No.”

There was a pause. “Care to elaborate?”

“No. You haven’t stopped telling me how you just know that it’s her. We all love her. What else is there?”

“Thanks,” he said after a beat. We didn’t do this shit with each other. If we needed someone with emotional bandwidth, we called Noah. “Jane told me you need to call her.”

Jane, Noah’s mum, and really the only mother I’d ever known, liked to hear from us often. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d last called her and I felt guilty about it. I didn’t like being on the phone but she would talk for a few minutes before letting me go and that seemed to be enough for her.

“I will.”

“Good. Now I need help coordinating a few things for my proposal. We’re going back to Italy to visit her mum again and she knows all my passcodes so I can’t hide anything from her.”

“What do you need?”

He was well aware I thought of Quinn like a sister and so any help he asked for I was willing to give.

Knight spent the next ten minutes walking me through who I needed to contact, what I needed to send to her mum, and what I needed to book. I took notes on my phone, only offering the occasional grunt, my skin already crawling at how many phone calls I was going to have to make.

“Well, I think that’s it. Don’t text me anything. Only tell me updates in person or over the phone when you’re sure she’s not there,” Knight instructed firmly. I knew how important this was for him so I held in my eye roll—barely. “I’ve got to go.”

“Knight?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m happy for you,” I grumbled.