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I’ve carried it for three weeks to prove I could restrain myself from blurting it out and not having the ring.
Every time I thought about reaching for it, another voice inside me insisted I should wait for something perfect. A restaurant filled with candles. A rink emptied after a game. A weekend somewhere expensive enough to make the moment feel permanent.
Instead, Charm sits on my lap beneath a Christmas tree too large for her loft, wearing pajamas covered in champagne bottles while I hold her ass and try not to cry over a library.
It feels more like us than anything I could’ve arranged.
“I had an entire speech prepared.”
Charm leans back enough to see my face. “What kind of speech?”
“The kind you would make me repeat because you got distracted halfway through it.”
The shift in my voice takes the smile from her lips. She searches my expression while I remove one hand from her ass and reach into my pocket.
“I worked on it for days,” I continue. “There was Tennyson, a little Brontë, and enough Donne to convince you I was being romantic when my intentions became indecent.”
Her gaze drops to my closed hand. “Do I still get the Donne?”
“You’ll get him later. I don’t want dead men saying this for me.”
I open my fingers.
The ring lies against my palm without a box or ribbon. A four-carat oval-cut diamond rises from a cathedral setting on a polished yellow-gold band, catching every white light from the tree.
Charm has explained more than once that anything over four carats is showing off. Four carats, apparently, is merely having standards. Yellow gold has always been her favorite, and the cathedral setting lifts the oval high enough to make the diamond impossible to ignore while leaving room for the wedding band because I don’t want to choose that part without her. The engagement ring is my question. We’ll design the piece that completes it together.
It is elegant, dramatic, and exactly as excessive and as fancy as my fairy is.
It is her.
It is Charm.
Her breath leaves in a broken sound.
“You spent a long time asking me for forever when neither of us knew how to survive the next day,” I say. “I couldn’t give it to you then, but I can now.”
Her eyes lift to mine as tears gather so quickly that the lights blur inside the green.
“I know exactly what loving you means. There will be days when mirrors lie to you and days when I forget how to ask for what I need. Hockey will own half my year, Encanto will own half of yours, and Briggs will probably eat whatever remains. None of that scares me enough to lose you again.”
“Ryan, please don’t make me sob before breakfast.”
“I’m not asking you to promise easy. I want honest. I want every morning you wake up and choose us where I can see you doing it, and I’ll give you the same.”
Her body begins trembling against mine.
“I could put you down and get on one knee,” I say, tightening my other hand around her ass, “but you belong in my arms when I ask.”
A sob catches behind her smile.
“Marry me, mi hada. Build the whole fucking life with me.”
Charm stares at me as tears spill freely down her cheeks. Her fingers move from my neck to my face, touching my jaw and mouth as though she needs proof I’m real before she trusts what she heard.
“You’re completely sure about this?”
“I have never been more fucking certain of anything.”
