“They were an indictment.”
He stood, brushing dirt from his palms.
Then he reached into his coat pocket.
And suddenly I could not breathe.
“Roman—”
“Let me finish before your talent for interrupting ruins my dignity.”
I laughed, already crying.
He came closer, not kneeling at first, just standing in front of me beneath the late sunlight with the fountain behind him and the rose canes bare for winter.
“When you fell into my arms,” he said quietly, “I thought I was looking at the beginning of a problem. Instead I was looking at the beginning of my life. I know what I’ve been. I know what I still have to repair. But if there is any grace in the world at all, let me spend the rest of it choosing you on purpose.”
Then he got down on one knee in the middle of our garden like he was bowing to the only truth he trusted.
“Sky Harding,” he said, voice rough now, “marry me.”
I laughed and cried at once, which was inconvenient but honest.
“Yes.”
His eyes shut for one second, pure relief.
Then he stood, slid the ring onto my finger, and kissed me with dirt on his hands and sunlight on his face and absolutely no concern for elegance.
From the terrace, Nico shouted, “About time!”
Cora, somewhere behind him, said, “Don’t ruin the moment.”
My father, who had come up the garden path so quietly I had not noticed him, wiped at his eyes and pretended it was allergies.
Roman drew me against him and looked down at my hand, at the ring catching autumn light.
“You know,” he murmured near my temple, “this is still a terrible story to tell people.”
I smiled against his chest.
“Then we won’t tell them the neat version.”
He tipped my chin up.
“No?”
“No. We’ll tell them the true one.”
And in the center of the garden that had once been my prison and then my refuge and finally my home, he kissed me again while the fountain ran and the roses slept and the future, for the first time in a very long time, felt like something neither of us had to fear.
THE END
