Chapter 279: Chapter 281: He Asked Me To Marry Him
He looked at it on her hand for a moment.
Then she reached up and pulled him down by the front of his shirt and kissed him, and he wrapped both arms around her and kissed her back and the coffee mug tipped slightly against her knee and neither of them noticed.
When she pulled back her forehead came to rest against his.
"You said you tried," she said. "To stop caring about me."
"Very deliberately," he confirmed.
"What did that look like."
"Mostly me being terrible to you and you refusing to be intimidated."
She laughed....surprised and real, the kind that came from somewhere before she could stop it.
He felt it against his chest.
"I was so scared of you," she said.
"I know."
"Not of what you’d do. Just of...." She shook her head slightly. "You saw through everything. I’d spent years being exactly what I needed to be in any given room and you just....looked at me and I felt like you were reading something I hadn’t written yet."
"I was," he said. "I still am."
She pulled back to look at him.
He looked at her face in the morning light. The ring on her hand. The blue chipped mug in her lap.
"We should tell your mother," he said.
"In a minute." She settled back against him. "I want one more minute of just this."
He wrapped his arm around her.
The garden was quiet. Completely still. The morning doing what it did without requiring anything from either of them.
One minute.
He counted it.
Then: "Mei is going to cry," he said.
"Absolutely." Aria nodded. "She’s going to tell me she knew."
"Did she know."
"She probably knew before I did." She looked at the ring on her finger. Turned it slightly in the light. "It fits."
"Marcus measured one of your other rings," he said.
She turned to look at him. "Marcus measured my ring."
"Three weeks ago."
"While I was...."
"Wearing it, yes. He said he was checking for something else and you believed him apparently."
She stared at him. "You are both...."
"Thorough," he said. "There’s a difference."
She shook her head.
But she was smiling. Completely, entirely smiling, the version of it she couldn’t contain even when she tried.
He’d put that there.
He intended to keep doing that.
****
ARIA’S POV
She called her mother at seven fifteen.
Mei picked up on the second ring which meant she’d been awake. She was always awake early, had been Aria’s whole life, something Aria had inherited and that Damien had also apparently inherited because they were both impossible before six AM.
"Aria," Mei said. "Is everything...."
"He asked me," Aria said.
Silence.
"Mum."
"I know." Her mother’s voice came out different. Smaller. "I know he was going to. He came to see me."
Aria looked at Damien across the kitchen where he was making coffee like he hadn’t just turned her entire life into something she’d needed to sit with for five minutes before she could speak properly.
"He came to see you," she said.
"On Friday. He brought the ring." A pause. "It was his grandmother’s, Aria."
"I know."
"Richard’s."
"I know, Mum."
"That man...." Her mother stopped. She could hear her composing herself. Mei Chen did not cry easily and when she did she was very private about it. "That man put his grandmother’s ring on my kitchen table and asked me if I had any objections."
Aria’s throat tightened. "What did you say."
"I said don’t make me regret it." A pause that sounded wet around the edges. "And then I told him to go ask you."
Aria pressed her lips together hard.
"Are you happy?" her mother said. "Genuinely. Not performed."
She looked at the ring on her finger. She looked at Damien, who was watching her from across the kitchen with his coffee in his hand and the particular expression she’d seen on his face the very first morning she’d woken up in this house. The one he wore when he thought she wasn’t looking.
She thought about a girl who had walked through these gates with a false name and a desperate plan and absolutely no idea what she was walking into.
"Yes," she said. "Genuinely."
Her mother exhaled.
"Good," Mei said. "Come for lunch. Bring him."
"We’ll be there at noon."
She hung up.
Damien raised an eyebrow across the kitchen.
"Noon," she said.
He nodded. Poured her a coffee and slid it across the counter.
She picked it up.
"Marcus measured my ring," she said.
"He did."
"While I was wearing it."
"Yes."
"And I didn’t notice."
"No."
She looked at him. "That’s actually impressive."
"He has a specific skill set."
She picked up her coffee. Looked at the ring on her finger one more time.
Then she looked at him.
"Hi," she said.
He looked at her.
"Hi," he said.
She smiled into her coffee.
Outside the garden was fully lit now, the morning properly arrived, the estate doing what it did. Inside the kitchen everything was exactly where it was supposed to be.
She took a sip of her coffee and smiled.
****
She stared at Alexandra’s name in her phone for a full minute before she called.
Not because she didn’t want to. Just because she was still learning what this was....this thing with Alexander, the shape of it, what it meant to call a man she’d known for four months with news that a daughter called her father with. She was still learning the vocabulary of it.
She called anyway.
It rang twice.
"Aria." His voice, even and immediate. He always picked up fast when it was her. She’d noticed that early and hadn’t said anything about it.
"Hi," she said.
"Is everything alright."
"Everything is fine." She looked at the ring on her finger. "I have something to tell you."
A pause. The specific pause of a man going very still.
"Damien asked me to marry him this morning," she said. "I said yes."
Silence.
Not long. Maybe four seconds. But from Alexander, who filled silences efficiently and without effort, four seconds was significant.
"Dad."
"I’m here." His voice came out slightly different. Controlled in the way that meant the opposite underneath. "I’m here. I just...." A pause. "Congratulations. Aria, I..." He stopped again.
She’d never heard him stop twice in the same sentence.
"Are you okay," she said.
"Yes." A breath. "Yes I’m okay. I’m...." Another stop. Then, quietly: "I’m very happy for you. I want you to know that. Whatever else I’m feeling right now, that’s the main thing."
She sat with that for a moment.
Whatever else I’m feeling.
