“Yeah, but…” I look back at the book. “That’s a little over the top, isn’t it. I mean, I get that this guy did something to piss him off, but he’s saying he basically obsessed over his wrath until he finally killed the guy.”
“What makes it even more interesting is that there’s a consensus in some literary circles that Blake’s apple symbolizes one of his own creative works that one of his contemporaries stole and passed off as their own.” He sets his laptop aside and starts massaging my feet. “The fact, as you so deftly pointed out, that there’s no final stanza that suggests any remorse for the vengeance would suggest Blake was hoping for an unhappy end to his plagiarist.”
I drop my forehead onto the book. “God, that feels good.”
He massages deeper. “Chris and Taryn are coming to graduation tomorrow. Chris has some big gift for you that he’s keeping secret even from me.”
“Seriously?”
We’ve spent some time with Caiden’s brother and his fiancée. I really like them both. But I don’t feel like I know them well enough for them to be giving me a gift.
“Are your parents coming?” he asks.
I nod against the book. “And Marcus.”
His fingers stall on my feet for a second before he goes back to working his magic. And I know why.
He’s never met Marcus.
Caiden moved to Berkeley with me when I came back to school sophomore year. We found our tiny studio apartment over a bar in a not-too-scary neighborhood in Oakland. He had some editing jobs and got a paid internship at a small non-profit in San Francisco, which turned into a full-time archivist position in their Knowledge Services department last year. I sold the Mini and busted my ass to keep my scholarships. I started getting invitations to poetry slams with prize money attached last year, and the more of those I’ve won, the more invitations I’ve gotten. We’re getting by. Just barely.
But Marcus has never come to see us in Oakland, and the few times we’ve gone home to visit, he makes a point not to be around, even though he moved home last year after he graduated UCLA. He’s coaching the girls’ water polo team at Oak Crest High while he’s trying to figure out what to do with his Exercise Science degree. In his heart, I think Marcus understands I’ve always loved Caiden, but he’s never gotten past what happened between us when I was only seventeen.
They say time heals all wounds. I hope they’re right.
I feel all the tension in my body leech out as Caiden massages. He has that power over me. Just his touch can bring me down from the edge of crazy. His presence, his love, is the only reason I’ve made it through the last three years at Berkeley with my sanity intact.
He rubs and I melt into the cushions, forgetting all about William Blake. But when his tongue finds my feet and makes totally unrelated parts of me wet, I turn over and watch him suck my toes.
Something on my foot catches the light and flashes. When I look closer, I realize he’s slipped a ring onto my toe.
A emerald ring. My birthstone. The emerald is a small and rectangular with tiny diamonds set around the edges.
I wiggle my toes and it shimmers in the sunlight. “My birthday was yesterday. Don’t you remember? You took me out for my first legal drink, then brought me home and took advantage of my drunken ass.”
He grins. “Oh I remember. All except the part about taking advantage of you. I’m pretty sure I was the one being ravaged all night.”
I slip the ring off my toe and crawl up Caiden’s body, laying across his chest and holding the ring up. “You already gave me a birthday present.”
“Then it’s a damn good thing this isn’t a birthday present.” He takes the ring from my hand. “Do you remember what I told you in the street the night I took you home with me and never brought you back?”
“You told me a lot of things,” I say, confused.
He rolls the ring in between his finger and thumb. “I said life isn’t pointless if you don’t lose sight of the things that really matter.”
My heart begins to pound when I start to follow what’s happening here. “You also said I owned you.”
He smiles, slow and sexy. “You do. Every fucking inch of me.” He lifts me gently by the hips and slides out from under me, then lowers himself to a knee on the carpet.
I sit up and just stare, unable to form a coherent thought.
“I always believed when I met The One, something about her would to me in a way no one else ever had. Ever since that first night in the library at Sierra four and a half years ago, when you were standing there asking about Byron in that baggy sweater and jeans, somewhere in my DNA, I knew it was you. Your spirit speaks to mine. Your soul feeds mine. You unlock all the best parts of me and I’m more when I’m with you. You are the thing that gives my life meaning. You keep me from being pointless. If I do any of those things for you”—he holds up the ring—“then marry me, Blaire.”
I crack up.