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Silence.
“Why are you so quiet?” Hannah asks as soon as the door shuts behind Mom.
I suck in a deep breath. I can’t tell you the last time I was fucking nervous for something. Figures she’d be the one.
“I’m not,” I murmur, voice gruff when I turn back to her.
She eyes me angrily from the bed, but I know her well enough to know that anger is just hurt.
She thinks I’m upset with her for leaving.
She’s right, but . . . this is not that.
“Well, can you just talk to me, please?” The tear slipping down her cheek is like a shot of cement down my spine.
She waits for a moment, but when I can’t form the words, her bottom lip wobbles.
“You’re being an asshole.”
“And you’re being a brat,” I counter.
You know, for being such a small thing in my pocket, it sure as fuck feels like the weight of the world when you’re trying to work up the damned courage to use it.
“If you want to go, we can. We don’t have to stay here—”
“Hannah, shut up.”
Her eyes go wide, but for once, she actually falls silent.
Thank fuck.
Taking a deep breath, I move back to the side of the bed where she’s sitting, sidestepping the chair to get on my knees beside the bed, instead. I’m sure it’s not what she envisioned. The hospital and now Mom’s, the gunshot wound to the shoulder. The fucking storm that we just came through, but . . . it’s us.
“You’ve been sulking for days.”
“I’m not sulking.” Far from it, actually. More like shitting myself at the prospect of asking the girl of my fucking dreams to marry me, but you know.
“So what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
She opens her mouth at the same time my brain just says: fuck it.
Her words catch in her throat, those sexy fucking eyes glinting in the later afternoon sun streaming through the window.
“Mason Carpenter,” she croaks, her voice hoarse. “Are you—”
“Proposing?” I stop her, voice rough in my throat. “Yeah, I fucking am.”
“You’ve been quiet because you were . . .”
“Because I was trying to decide if this was the right time, but then I realized, there isn’t a perfect time. We aren’t candlelit dinners or picnics on the beach at sunset, Hannah. We’re darkness and mine has fucking craved yours since the moment I laid eyes on you. I can’t promise shit won’t be difficult from time to time. We may argue. We may not. But I promise I willneverstop fucking chasing you, Hannah Marie.”
She swallows audibly, slowly reaching up to take the glistening black gold band.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispers, as if she says it any louder everything around us will slip away.
“The vines are me holding onto you—” I murmur “—with a fucking death grip, might I add. The diamonds are what you gave to me when you gave me your love. And that big stone in the center, with the green bleeding into the clear, is us bleeding for each other because I don’t ever want to be without you by my side again.”
