“It’s supposed to be really good champagne,” I said with a deep breath, and the smile on Luke’s face made the stress in my shoulders dissipate. He kissed my forehead and offered the bottle to me to open.
I shook my head and pushed it back to him. He shrugged and opened the bottle with a satisfying pop. I watched over the counter and through the backyard to Sadie still rolling in the grass as Luke poured our glasses behind me.
He said something that I didn’t catch as I daydreamed about what it would be like when we got all of our furniture—both new and old—into the space. As I imagined which angle the couch would best fit, a glass of bubbly champagne appeared in front of my face. I retrieved my glass from Luke’s hand and caught sight of the fresh ink on his forearm. It was a tattoo Devon had drawn up for him.
It was my silhouette—my hair, my back, the curve of my hips—but nestled between my shoulder blades and shaping around my sides were feathery angel wings that complemented the halo hovering above my head.
When Luke first approached me with the idea for the tattoo, I immediately told him it was a bad idea. It was loosely based on the photograph Valerie had taken of us in an unsuspecting position.
But I guess it was Luke’s own version of the champagne—he’d taken something awful and stained with terrible memories and turned it into something beautiful. It was oddly cathartic. And it has become my favorite tattoo. He’d inked himself onto my heart, so it was only fair I am inked on him, too.
I ran my nails over the smooth skin and over the tattoo. Goose bumps erupted over his tanned skin and around his dark hair. I covered my smile by taking a sip of my champagne.
Since we’d walked into the house, my phone hadn’t stopped buzzing, so I ripped it from my shorts pocket and set it on the counter in front of us. I had almost a dozen missed text messages from Amanda.
Luke laughed, peering over my shoulder and seeing yet another message come through.
“Can she not be away from you for half an hour?” he asked.
I bit my lip and contemplated telling him the truth, not that it would hurt at that point. “She thinks you bought a ring and, for some reason, believes that today, right now, is the time you’d propose. She’s been crazy about it lately, but I think it’s just because she’ssosingle that she wants to live vicariously through everyone else.”
I took another long sip of champagne, enjoying the bubbles, as Luke shuffled behind me and chuckled. I finished my glass and his hand brushed against my stomach. “Bought a ring, maybe like that one?” he whispered into my ear, and it was all I could do not to drop my glass.
He caught the glass as I fumbled with it but kept one arm banded around me. I gasped at the oval-shaped stone that was comfortably tucked into the black velvet box he’d placed on the counter. My hands covered my mouth and the tears I’d nearly cried before—the regretful, sorrowful tears—morphed into tears of pure, unadulterated happiness.
I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest with the way the organ in my chest pounded and based on how difficult it suddenly was to suck in air.
For the second time that day, Luke spun me around to face him, retrieved the ring from the counter, and dropped to one knee. My eyes flitted back and forth between Luke and the ring but finally settled on his face, although the tears in my eyes made it hard to see anything.
“You have made me happier than I ever imagined I could be. I feel like I’ve been looking for you for forever, and you were literally right next door. For most of my life, I believed the unexpected was a bad thing. But you changed that. You were so perfectly unexpected in all the best ways. I know the way things happened wasn’t ideal, but at least it led me to you, Angel. So, with that, I want to promise you that I will always be honest, I will love you every day like it’s the last day I will do so, and I will make sure that we continue to make new memories together. Hazel Cooper, will you marry me?”
“Yes.” The word flooded out of me like I’d been holding it in for a lifetime. As Luke tried to stand, I flung my arms around him, somehow knocking the large man off balance for just a moment. But he quickly righted himself and wrapped his arms around me like he’d never let me go.
“Okay, let’s hope this sucker fits,” Luke quipped, pulling back to wiggle the ring free from the box and slide it onto my finger.
It fit perfectly.
The diamond was even more brilliant in its rightful place on my finger, and the platinum band was thin and cool against my skin.
“I don’t know what to say right now,” I said honestly. It was the last thing I was expecting from the day, but my cheeks already hurt from smiling.
“No need to say anything because I need to kiss you now.” And that he did. He kissed me thoroughly and until I felt it in my toes. His lips and tongue were urgent against mine, like it was the last piece of the proposal puzzle.
“We have to break in this house,” he muttered against my lips, both of us equally out of breath.
“Oh, we absolutely will, with or without a bed.” I smirked. “Pour me more champagne and you can tell me if you think the kitchen island or up against the wall is the best place.”
“Both. I’m going to make love to my fiancé on every surface of our house.” With that dirty promise and a wink in my direction, he turned away and began refilling our glasses. I took the opportunity to shamelessly stare down at my hand like it was a foreign object, like it had been replaced with an unfamiliar version of my hand.
Luke reapproached with my champagne glass in his hand but paused before he gave it to me. He clasped my fingers in his and kissed my new ring. “It looks good.”
“Yeah, I’ll give you that one: you did damn good,” I said, mimicking his motion and raising my glass. As was his usual, his free hand found its way around to the back of my neck and tangled into my hair. I understood what he meant in that moment, when he said I felt like home to him, because he felt like home to me.
Sometimes home isn’t a place, it’s a person.
“I love you,” I whispered once I realized I hadn’t yet told him since he’d proposed. “A life with you is worth going through everything we’ve been through. And I’d do it all again and again if it meant that we ended up here, together, every single time.”
We both smiled, and the happiness flowed between us freely and easily.
“To the memories we’ll make, Angel,” he said, tapping his glass against mine. We sipped the expensive champagne and when he kissed me again, it tasted like forever.
THE END
