Chapter 278: Chapter 280: Will You......
ARIA’S POV
Saturday morning started the same way all her mornings started.
She woke up before six. Lay there for a few minutes in the quiet of the room. Reached for Damien’s side of the bed automatically and found it empty, which happened sometimes when he had early calls or couldn’t sleep.
She got up. Made her coffee in the blue chipped mug. Pulled on the oversized jumper she’d claimed from his wardrobe three weeks ago and that he hadn’t asked for back.
She went to the garden.
The morning was clear. The kind of clear that meant the sky had decided to make an effort....pale and sharp and completely still, the grounds wet from overnight dew and catching the early light in a way that made everything look just slightly more real than usual.
She went to her bench.
Sat down. Wrapped both hands around her mug. Looked at the garden the way she did every morning, the slow taking stock of it, the particular peace of being in a space that had become completely hers without her planning for that to happen.
She heard the door.
She turned around.
Damien was coming across the lawn toward her. No jacket, just a shirt, his hands empty. He walked the way he always walked....like he knew exactly where he was going....but there was something underneath it this morning. Something in the set of his shoulders that she couldn’t immediately name.
She watched him crossed the lawn to her side of the garden.
He stopped in front of the bench.
Looked at her.
"You’re up early," she said.
"I didn’t sleep much."
She studied his face. "Are you okay."
"Yes." He looked at the bench beside her. "Can I sit down."
She moved her mug. He sat.
They looked at the garden together for a moment. The light was changing, the pale sharp early colour warming slowly into something fuller. A bird started somewhere in the hedgerow and then stopped.
She looked at him and saw that he was just sitting there looking so rigid and she decided to wait for him to talk.
But he wasn’t talking, which wasn’t unusual. But the quality of the not talking was different this morning. She could feel something in him that was being held carefully, the way you held something that mattered while you figured out where to put it.
"Aria," he said.
"Damien."
He turned to look at her.
She looked back at him and felt something shift in her chest....some particular awareness, the way you felt a change in the air before you could name what was changing.
"I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this," he said. "For three weeks. I had things I was going to say. I had a version of this that was....organised. Made sense." He paused. "And then I sat here this morning waiting for you and I decided I’m not doing the organised version."
She was very still.
"I knew who you were before you told me your name," he said. "I had your real name in a file on my desk the week you arrived. I watched you lie to me every day for weeks and I watched you be terrified and I watched you fall apart and put yourself back together before anyone could see the pieces." He held her gaze. "And I watched myself....." He stopped. "I watched myself stop caring about the lie. Because whoever you were being, whatever name you were using, you were the most....you were....." He shook his head slightly. "I couldn’t find a way to not care about you. And I tried. I tried very deliberately."
"I know you did," she said softly.
"You made it extremely difficult."
"I know."
Something shifted in his face. That thing that lived next to a smile.
Then he reached into his shirt pocket.
He held the ring between his fingers, not doing anything with it yet, just letting her see it. She looked at it.....simple, single stone, oval. The kind of ring that didn’t need to announce itself. The kind chosen by someone who understood exactly who it was for.
"This was my grandmother’s," he said. "My grandfather wore it for forty three years." He paused. "He put it on my desk without me asking. Didn’t say anything. Just put it down and looked at me and that was....that was grandfather giving me his blessing which is the closest he gets to telling me he loves me and I...." He stopped. "I’m not doing the organised version, I told you."
She pressed her lips together.
Her eyes were doing something she couldn’t stop.
"I’m not going to tell you our life is going to be easy," he said. "I’m not going to promise you nothing bad happens. You know my world and you know what it costs and you chose it anyway which is either very brave or very foolish and I suspect it’s both." He looked at her steadily. "What I can tell you is that every decision I make, I make thinking about you. What you need. What you’ve built. Who you are." He paused. "You are the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing I think about at night and every significant thing in between." Another pause. "That’s not going to change."
She couldn’t speak.
He looked at the ring in his fingers.
"I love you," he said simply. Like it was the most straightforward fact he’d ever stated. "I loved you when I shouldn’t have. I loved you when I was furious at you. I loved you in a hospital room when I was more frightened than I’ve ever been in my life." He looked up at her. "I’m going to love you for a very long time. I’d like to do that as your husband." He held the ring out. "If you’ll have me."
****
DAMIEN’S POV
She looked at the ring.
Then she looked at his face.
Her eyes were bright and her coffee mug was forgotten in her lap and she had the expression she wore when something had gotten past the careful composure....not broken, just open. Fully open.
He waited.
He’d told Marcus she’d say yes. He’d told himself he was certain. And he was.....he was certain down to his bones.
His heart was going like he’d never been certain of anything in his life.
"You practised that," she said.
"Some of it."
"Which parts."
"The organised parts."
She pressed her lips together again. Her eyes were very bright. "Your grandmother’s ring."
"Yes."
"Richard gave it to you."
"Put it on the desk without a word. Which from him...."
"Is everything," she said.
"Yes."
She looked at the ring one more time.
Then she looked at him and he looked back at her and the garden was completely still around them and the morning light was doing what it did and none of that was the point, the point was her face, the point was always just her face.
"Yes," she said.
One word. Completely certain. No hesitation between the question and the answer, just....yes. Like she’d known what she was going to say before she sat down this morning and had just been waiting for him to get there.
He reached over and took her hand and put the ring on her finger.
It fit perfectly.
