"I don't want to talk about it, Kingsley. It's done. It's over."
He takes another bite of his dessert and puts down the fork.
"Come. Please. Come for me. I need you there, Luna."
"You don't. You'll have your whole family there."
"Not my whole family. Not if you're not there. I know what you did for me. Something only my family would do."
He pulls an embossed invitation out of his pocket and slides it across the table to me.
Luna Phamin his handwriting across the front.
I'd been there when they picked this invitation stationery. He'd said he wanted it because it looked like moonlight, and caught my eye across the table. One of the rare times he actually looked at me when we were at the office.
"I'm not sure I'm ready, Kingsley.
He gently lays his hand on top of mine and squeezes. "Okay. I understand. Just know that, I want you there. And you don't need to know if you'll be welcome there. If I’m somewhere, anywhere in this world. Then you'll always have a place. Right beside me."
I trace the knotted pattern in the wood, Gnarled, jagged, but sanded to an almost impossible smoothness. "Why did you come here, Kingsley?" I finally ask.
"Aside from making your fire? I didn't want Claude getting any ideas."
"Aside from that."
He stares out into the moon’s reflection on the water’s surface. "I wanted to know if you could live a life like this with me. Away from everything else. Away from London. Away from all the chaos, the excitement, the business. I wanted to know if just me, if I would be enough for you."
"And what did you find out?"
"What I already knew, that this is all that I would ever need. With you."
He gets up from the table, tucking something into his pocket. I follow, pulling the cardigan around me. Surveying the centerpiece, he gently plucks two flowers from the setting, tucking one behind my ear, and slipping the other through his pocket button hole.
"Thank you for my best birthday dinner, Luna."
"Any time. But I can’t promise that I’ll be there at the jubilee. I’m sorry that you came all this way just to build my fire."
He touches my cheek with the back of his hand, his eyes dancing with equal parts light and dark. "Sweetheart, don't you know by now, that I would crawl on my hands and knees through the entire cosmos just to lay my eyes on your face one more time?"
Forty-Eight
Kingsley
I drive the twelvehours back to London stopping only once for gas and to stretch my legs.
The flower I picked from the centerpiece tucked into my dashboard, the napkin she cut and dyed, tucked into my pants pocket.
The jewelry box still tucked in my suit jacket pocket.
The words still tucked in the back of my throat.
She isn't ready.
So... I'll wait.
I slide the handwritten note into the envelope and walk out to Marcus' new office. I wasn't quite ready to have him clear outLuna's office yet, so he moved into a new one without me even asking.
"Can you courier this please? Make sure it gets there. Go yourself if you have to."
