No Perfect Hero(110)

“Careful now. You’re gonna get too big for Heart’s Edge in a flash, and then you’re going to leave us.”

“Never,” I promise. I don’t know how to make him understand what that really means to me when I’ve been so tentatively skirting around these feelings. But I lean back into his grip, taking another sip of my champagne. “I like it here. For reasons.”

“Reasons, huh?” He chuckles, a deep rumble pouring through me, this sound and sensation that makes me feel so warm and content. “How 'bout we pinky swear on that never?”

I laugh. “Do we still pinky swear at this age?”

“We could. Jenna always treated it like her religion,” he says with a smile.

Something light and stingy pricks at my chest. I lace my fingers through his, grateful he's sharing something so intimate.

“Then let's do it. Pinky swear.”

“Or on second thought...maybe I've got a better idea,” he whispers, pulling away, then drawing me around to face him, reaching for my hand.

Underneath the starlight, those bright blue eyes of his are the same shade as night, looking down at me with glowing warmth that still, after all these months, makes my breath catch.

“Warren?” His name rolls off my tongue.

He captures my hand, tighter, tugging me gently toward the stairs down the back of the deck. “Come with me, darlin'.”

I can’t help being curious. So I set the champagne flute down on the deck railing and follow him to the grass that’s been worn into pathways by too many feet.

He leads me across the field, toward the cliff that should be nightmare fuel after Stewart. And yet...somehow, I’ve never been able to shake the beauty and wonder I got the first time I saw the sun come up beyond its heart-shaped edge.

Not even a demon like Stewart can ruin that. We won't let him.

And the view is just as stunning tonight with the town's lights so dim they can’t eclipse the blaze of the Milky Way overhead, the tiny glittering motes of lights and burning stardust so many light-years away. I wonder if the people in the light already lived out their stories eons before we ever saw them while we, down here, stand below with our stories just beginning.

I stop, looking up at the sky with my heart in my throat. Warren squeezes my hand, stroking his thumb over the edge of my palm. “Feel like tossing a few flowers?”

I laugh, but...he's serious.

Oh my God.

I tilt my head into the night breeze and squeeze his hand right back. “I thought you only did that when you wanted to make a promise? Isn't that how it goes?”

“Maybe I do tonight.” For all my laughter, my playfulness, he’s gravely serious.

I see it in his eyes, even if his warmth, his steadiness, never wavers.

Suddenly, I catch my breath, looking up at him as he bends to pluck up two pretty, waving peonies from the grass at our feet.

He offers me one, but he’s holding it a little oddly, fingers pinched up just under the flower head.

The sweetness of it, the romanticism, distracts me as he rumbles, “Scatter one with me, Hay.”

I can’t help smiling, reaching out to take the flower, everything inside me feeling light.

But the flower is oddly heavy – and I realize why as I take it by the stem.

There’s a ring perched in it.

Somehow, Warren freaking Ford has worked a delicate platinum and diamond engagement band over the head of a live flower, so that when he plucked it for me, it would dangle from the stem.

My heart flutters, my voice drying up into nothing as I let the ring slide off the stem and into my palm, my fingers shaking. “W-Warren?”

He smiles slowly. “I realize this might’ve been a backwards way to do this, but here we are.”

Here. We. Are.

Then he sinks down on one knee, leaving no doubt what he intends as he gently takes my hand with the ring still cradled in my palm, the other hand still clutching the flower.

Those devastating, perfect eyes gaze up at me, dark with such devotion it’s like he can’t see anything else, the kind of attention that makes you feel stripped raw and bare. “Hay, you came crashing into my life like a gunshot,” he says. “You struck me hard enough to spin me around. I’ve been dead for years. Stuck in limbo, in grief. But you make me ready to live again, and I can’t imagine my second shot at life without you, woman. You’re everything. The most funny, creative, fierce, loyal, smart, gorgeous chick I’ve ever met and—”

“Stop flattering me, you ass,” I choke out, grinning from ear to ear, my throat tight and my eyes streaming. Warren blurs together in his muscle and ink and warmth. “Just ask me. Ask me so I can say yes.”

“Hey now. Don’t steal my thunder.” But he’s grinning, squeezing my hand warmly. “Okay, Haley West. Will you do me the honor of becoming my—”

“Yes!” I say before he can even finish, flinging myself at him. “God, yes, you gorgeous man.”

He rises up to meet me halfway.

We crash together in a kiss like thunder meeting lightning, hot and salty as my tears. I was raised to hide them once, to never let anyone see my pain – but this is joy, and I wear it proudly as I kiss Warren like it’s the first and last time. And a promise of many, many more.

That family I’ve longed for, that husband, that warmth, that togetherness...