Page 135 of Cruel Kiss
We line up on the dock as the water laps and gurgles at the pilings under us. My mom stands off to the side with her arms crossed, already crying and pretending she isn't. Navi has his phone up, filming, even though Ronan explicitly told him not to and warned him about which orifice the phone will end up in if he disregards orders.
It's so fucking perfect I could cry.
"Okay," I say. "So. There's no clerk this time. Nobody to say the words for us."
"Then we say them ourselves," Ronan answers.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small velvet box. When he cracks the lid, I see that inside, nestled on a bed of crushed suede, is a ring.
It's not new. Not big. If it were in a storefront, my eyes would probably slide right by it. It's a thin gold band with a teeny-tiny stone, old-fashioned. It's smudged with fingerprints and the metal is worn a bit soft at the edges.
"This was my mother's," Ronan explains.
I stop breathing.
"It's the only thing of hers I kept. After she died, there was almost nothing. My father had sold most of it, or broken it, or hurled it at a wall. But this—" He turns the box slightly so the last of the light catches the stone. "Pyotr had it. He took it off her hand the night he came, and he kept it for me, all those years. He gave it back to me when I let him go home. I didn't even know he had it until then."
I press my hand to my mouth.
"I didn't give it to you at the courthouse," he goes on, "because a paper marriage didn't deserve it. I gave you a plain band from a shop, but I put this one back in my pocket and I told myself maybe someday." His voice goes husky with emotion. "I didn't think there'd be asomeday,if we're being honest. In fact, I thought I'd be dead. I wrote you a letter about it, if you recall."
"I do. We burned that letter."
"We sure did." He looks up at me. "So there's no letter anymore. There's just me, standing on a dock, holding the one thing my mother left behind, asking you to wear it. Not because we have to. Not for spousal privilege. Not to convince a fed. Because I wantyouto have the only pure thing I've got. My mother would have loved you, Calista Meadows. She'd have loved that you're loud and that you take up room and that you never once made yourself small for me."
I'm crying now. Openly and unashamed. I wouldn't dream of wiping it away.
"Will you wear it?" he asks.
"Yes," I say. "God, yes."
He takes the plain practice band off my finger and slides Anna's ring on in its place.
It fits like it was made for me, which it wasn't, of course.
But somehow, that makes it fit better.
"Now come the vows," Hayden prompts. "That's the next part. I remember."
"Right," I say, laughing wetly. "The vows."
Ronan takes both my hands. His are warm. Mine are shaking a little, and he squeezes them, and then remembers, out of habit, that gripping wasn't in the deal, and starts to loosen his hold. I hold on tighter so he can't.
"There's no deal anymore," I remind him. "Grip all you want."
He laughs and pulls me a little closer.
"I'm not a good man," he begins. "I've told you that a hundred times. I've spent my whole life taking things. But I stopped, with you. I've spent every day since trying togiveinstead. And I'll spend whatever I've got left doing exactly that. For you. And for Hayden, and for Isabella, and for one very brave caterpillar." Isabella beams at the inclusion of her friend. "I'll tell you you're beautiful every morning. I'll hang whatever mirrors you want in whatever rooms you want. I'll make the pancakes with the crispy edges. And I will never, ever again decide something for you in the dark. That's my vow. That's all of it."
"That's a good one," Hayden announces.
Then it's my turn.
I've spent weeks thinking about what I'd say. I had a whole thing planned. It may or may not have contained eight sections. Just for good luck.
But standing here on the dock with his mother's ring on my hand and my kids beside me and the lake's surface like a dark, perfect mirror beneath us, all the planned words go out of my head.
I speak from the heart instead.
