“They are,” she agreed.
Ryan’s heart started pounding a little harder. What if after everything they’d been through, she decided that life with him—a soldier—wasn’t something she could deal with anymore? Was love enough? It had to be. He had to take that chance.
He took his eyes off the stars and looked at Fin, the weight of love he felt for her crushing his chest. “Ask me, Fin, what I see when I look up at all those stars.”
She met his eyes, shifting closer, her smooth skin brushing against his rough, hardened body. “What do you see?”
“You,” he said simply.
Tears filled her eyes.
“You’re all I see. Nothing holds more beauty in my eyes than you do. No one will ever love you the way I do.”
“Ryan,” she whispered thickly.
“Remember that day I let you drive my car? You had to agree to that one condition, and when I eventually told you what it was, you weren’t allowed to say no.”
“Uh huh,” she murmured. “But you never told me what it was.”
“Marry me, Fin.”
Feeling Ryan’s eyes on her, that prickle of awareness tickling her spine, Fin tore her eyes away from her son and looked up.
Ryan was standing at the kitchen window chatting to Kyle, but his eyes were fixed on her. Catching her glance, he winked and her heart fluttered. His eyes dropped to the ring on her finger, turning those flutters to hard thumps at the reminder of him asking her to marry him.
It had been the singularly most beautiful night in all her life.
He’d looked down at her, his eyes dark with love and apprehension and asked, “Marry me, Fin?”
She’d had to close her eyes for a brief moment against the waves of emotion that took her on a wild path down memory lane.
The first time she’d met him that connection had been instant, and had never gone away. Growing up, she’d always been aware of him, the love for him growing inside her, falling into an ache that she was too young to recognise as heartbreak when he’d walked away, leaving her and joining the Army, giving them the heart that should have been hers all along.
“Six years, Ryan. Do you know how hurt I was, each day passing by and getting nothing—not even a note or an email? Both of you left me, and I was okay with that. I understood that this was what you needed to do, so I moved on. I built a life that doesn’t include you … I’d have given you my entire heart if you’d only asked, but it’s not yours now. It’s not yours.”
She hadn’t meant the words because she’d already given him her heart. It had only ever been his.
“I hurt too. For six years I fought every day not to think of you, and I lost, because every day you were all I could see.”
And now here he was, in her arms, telling her she was still all he could see, and asking her the one thing that would tie them both together forever.
The smile on Fin’s face grew wide. “Yes, Ryan. I’ll marry you.”
Jacob’s little legs kicked her in the thigh, startling her out of the memory. “Hey, little man,” she murmured as she tickled his belly, warmth spreading through her as he giggled. “Beating on your poor old mum already. That’s not nice. We’re going to have to get daddy to teach you how to treat a lady, huh?”
He babbled noisily, the sound ranging from a sweet, low pitch to a decibel breaking squeal.
“Wow, Fin. Your son is loud,” Rachael told her, as if Fin couldn’t hear it already. “It feels like a thousand rusty forks are stabbing me in the ears.”
She swooped down on the blanket to pluck Jacob into her arms, but her mum snatched him up before Rachael got the chance. Lifting his little white singlet, she blew a noisy raspberry onto his little belly.
Rachael watched on, her eyes flat, hands on her hips, making sure Fin’s mum could see she was unimpressed. “Excuse me, Julie, but I believe we agreed it was my turn?”
“We did.” Julie paused to nibble on Jacob’s fingers. “But it’s bath time, isn’t it, my little darling?” she said to Jacob.
Fin’s mum started walking away, her grandson tucked securely on her hip.
“Well I can do it,” Rachael told her, hot on her heels, her voice fading as they trailed inside and left Fin alone.
She sighed, splaying out on her back on the blanket and staring up into the blue sky, feeling a pang at the knowledge this was her last night with Ryan.
Deeming him fit for duty, the Army were deploying him to Afghanistan, so he was trying to do too much, wearing himself out around the house in the need to fit the coming six months into just a few days. Fin tired easily now—her heart too damaged to function normally—and though she never said, she knew he could see her exhaustion, and it only pushed him harder and wore him out faster.