“Let me just shower first,” he said. “You can pack my stuff.”
He looked so hopeful I didn’t have the heart to tell him no. I dressed back into my club trappings and began to pick through the wreckage. What a mess he’d made. Though I couldn’t even grumble about it. I liked that he could depend on me for these small things. He didn’t really need me, but he could rely on me.
And the same was true for him. What I’d said back at the club, that I’d needed it, needed him, hadn’t been right. I didn’t need him, or even his house or any of that. I wanted it and him and everything, but I would be okay no matter what.
I threw his clothes into the one piece of luggage there. Everything else went into a large trash bag I found. I’d sort it all out later and clean all the clothes. I tossed a pair of jeans into the bag, and they thudded against the floor. I pulled them back out—maybe it was his phone or something like that.
I reached my hand into the pocket and pulled out a small velvet box.
And stared at it. Marveled at it, rejoiced, then rejected it.
It had to be jewelry. Maybe a— No, don’t even think it. It had to be a necklace or something. Maybe an apology necklace. Or maybe it wasn’t even for me, but Rose or Bailey or anyone but me.
I didn’t want to know. Well, I did, but I didn’t want to guess. Madness lay that way. It was like Pandora’s box, only worse. I hadn’t even opened it, and already it couldn’t be put away.
If I put it back in the jeans and put the jeans back on the floor, he’d know I’d seen it. If I put the jeans in the bag, I’d only have to pull them out again to wash them, and then I’d be in the same dilemma and he’d know I’d seen it.
In a situation like this, damned if I did and damned if I didn’t, there was only one thing to do. I opened the box. A big, square diamond winked at me from its satin bed.
Yes, I immediately thought, only no one had asked me a question.
“Damn,” Colin said.
I hadn’t even heard the water shut off. He stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and plucked the box from my hand, snapping it shut.
“Pretend you didn’t see that,” he said.
My jaw dropped. “You’re just going to leave me hanging?”
“You’re not pretending.”
“Have you changed your mind?”
He shrugged. “Wait and see.”
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head.
He sighed, resigned. Then I saw the spark in his eyes. He was enjoying this, the sadist! I ought to say no. I ought to make him ask me and then say no, but there wasn’t any chance of that.
He dropped the towel and pulled on the jeans from the floor. He was going to do it.
I clapped. “You didn’t have to do that. In fact, it could have helped your case.”
He gave me a look.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” I said. It was all in good fun, but now wasn’t the time to risk it.
He dropped to one knee and took my hand. I shivered. Don’t cry.
I had dreamed of this, once. I’d thought all those wishes and hopes had evaporated away, but now I greeted them like an old childhood friend. It had never been like this, in those dreams, in a motel room where we’d had sex, me wearing slutty clothes and him wearing only jeans. Well, he might have been wearing only jeans in my adolescent dreams. He looked damned good that way. The packaging was different, but this was what I’d always wanted.
Not just getting married, but the forever and ever, I love you, amen.
“Allie,” he said. “You told me once I had a white-knight complex. You said I saved you.”
He was going to say I saved him. It was going to be so romantic.
“But the truth is,” he said, “I didn’t save you—I stole you. I wanted you and I knew I didn’t deserve you, but I didn’t care. And for some reason it seems like you don’t either, so it seems to me that I should make it permanent before you come to your senses. Will you marry me?”
The whole last half of that speech, I hadn’t been able to see his face, but I’d heard him. God, had I heard him. It was the very best possible proposal I’d ever heard. More than I’d ever imagined, but so incredibly us. Only Colin could have said that, and only to me. Don’t pass out.
“Allie?”
“Yes.” I sucked in a deep breath. “I do. Yes, yes.”
The ring slipped on my finger. Then he was kissing me, and I tasted my tears on my tongue and then impatiently swiped my face and kissed him some more. He pulled me into his arms and kissed me harder, but I pulled away.
“No,” I said. “Not until we get home.”
We packed everything else up together, and then we drove separately back to our house. The sky was already in that dusky color of almost light of the very early morning. Shelly lay sleeping on the couch, and I decided not to wake her. We tiptoed past her into the bedroom like two teenagers late from curfew.