The kiss is hard, messy, and soaked in chlorine and pure adrenaline. I don’t care. I deepen it and feel his grin against my mouth as I tangle my fingers in his wet hair.
“Damn.” Knox whistles from the edge of the pool. “Get a room!”
I don’t even look back. I just kiss Ash harder.
When I finally pull away, my chest heaving, Ash’s grin is wide.
“Think I proved my point?” he asks, his voice rough.
“Maybe.” I bite my bottom lip. “But you’re still dead for that ass smack.”
“Worth it.”
And yeah… it totally was. This life is one that I didn’t think I would ever have, but now I couldn’t ask for a more perfect one.
Two years later
The sun beats down on the tarmac, and heat waves rise off the pavement as the last of the crowd trickles out, still clutching signed posters and grinning like it was the best damn day of their lives. I wipe the back of my hand across my forehead, my flight suit half unzipped as I linger by my aircraft, trying to play it cool.
But my hands won’t stop fidgeting.
Get it together, man.
I shift my weight from one foot to the other and glance down at the small box burning a hole in my flight suit pocket. My heart is racing, heavier than it ever was before a flight.
“Hey, stranger.”
Her voice reaches me before she does, soft, like it always has the power to ground me. I turn just as Amelia strolls over, pulling her aviators down the bridge of her nose, her dark raven hair a little messy from the breeze.
“You okay?” she asks, her head tilting, and she reads me like she always does.
I swallow hard. “Yeah. Just… thinking.”
Before I spiral into my own nerves, her arms wrap around my waist, fitting perfectly against me. The tension in my shoulders breaks instantly, and I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
She looks up at me, her green eyes searching. “Ash?”
I bend down and kiss her—slow and deep—like I need a second to savor it. Because the next part? It is going to change everything.
I pull back, my heart pounding in my damn throat.
And then I drop to one knee.
Her gasp is instant, and her hands fly to her mouth as her aviators nearly slip right off her face.
“Ash!”
I smile, my nerves mixing with pure, raw love. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Amelia. Through every flight, every storm, every damn thing life’s thrown at us—you’ve been my constant. My copilot.” I chuckle, shaking my head. “I didn’t think I’d ever get this lucky, but here we are.”
Her eyes fill with tears, the kind she always tries to blink away but never quite can.
I pull the ring from my pocket, the sun hitting the diamond just right as I hold it out to her.
“Marry me, Amelia. Be my forever.”
For a second, there is only the sound of the wind moving across the tarmac—and then she practically tackles me.
“Yes! Yes, Ash!” she shouts, laughing through her tears as she wraps her arms around my neck.