Page 257 of Wait for Him

“So am I, and yet I’m trying to perform precision work here.”

She laughs again, and I finally manage to slide the ring onto her finger.

It fits. Thank God.

I’ll never tell her this, but I had this ring made over a year ago.

We were in New York when I snuck off and told her I had a meeting. Technically, I did. Just not the kind she thought. I spent an embarrassing amount of time with a jeweler going through designs and rejecting every damn thing he put in front of me because none of it looked like Rose. Too traditional. Too obvious. Too much like something I'd already seen on somebody else's hand.

I didn't want a ring somebody else could wear.

I wanted Rose's ring.

So I had the whole thing designed from scratch. First of its kind. Delicate without being dainty, romantic without all the sugary bullshit she'd hate, and made for one woman. I walked out of that meeting feeling pretty fucking pleased with myself.

Then Rose left for Catalina before the ring was finished.

It showed up a few weeks later.

That was a fun fucking delivery.

I opened the box, looked at the ring I'd planned to put on the finger of a woman who had just disappeared from my life, closed it again and shoved it into the back of my dresser. It stayed there untouched for over a year because I couldn't bring myself to get rid of it, but looking at the damn thing wasn't doing me any favors either.

Then she came home.

A few weeks ago, I pulled it back out.

Getting it resized without Rose noticing required stealing one of her rings long enough to have it measured, which somehow proved significantly harder than getting the woman to sign an actual marriage license. She notices everything except, apparently, when I'm actively preparing to marry her.

Rose stares down at it now, turning her hand slightly as the stone catches the hospital lights. The pale pink oval sits at the center in tiny rose-gold prongs, with slender vines twisting around it instead of a traditional band. Tiny sculpted roses and leaves wind toward the stone before curling around her finger.

Fuck, it looks good on her.

Better than it ever looked in that box.

I watch her face instead of the ring, waiting for her reaction, and when her eyes finally come back to mine, I can already see that she knows exactly what's coming.

“Do not start with me, Marcus Elliott Jackson.”

I grin. “My fiancée is technically correct now.”

She grabs my face and kisses me before I can say anything else. I have to keep it chaste considering we are in a hospital room with my best friend, his wife and their newborn daughter approximately four feet away, but fuck. The second her mouth touches mine, every thought in my head shifts toward getting her home.

Which is deeply inappropriate.

Probably.

I kiss her once more before forcing myself to pull back, and the second she sees my face, her eyes narrow.

“No.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You didn't have to.”

“I just proposed to you. I'm allowed to look at you.”

“You're looking at me like you want to get me naked.”