Page 32 of Rent an Enforcer

“Twelve.” He holds up his phone to show me. He already had the weather app pulled up. Just when I think I can’t love him more.

Twelve. “I think I can handle that,” I decide with a shaky laugh. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Still, I need him to get out of the SUV and come around to my side to help me out. I might be able to walk on the beach, but opening a car door? That’s a little more than I’m capable of right now. Lucky for me, he takes care of it and holds my hand while we walk up the path between the dunes. The grass whips sideways in the breeze, and I feel it on my face. That push. The invisible hands. My chest goes tight the way it always does.

But Tristan’s hand is around mine, and the quiet is there, the way it always is when he’s close. It’s enough to help me keep walking.

We come over the top of the dune, and all at once, the ocean opens up in front of me.

At first, I can’t breathe. It’s exactly the way I painted it. The green is alive in a way no pigment can hold. Shifting and glowing, lit from inside the way I’ve been trying to capture for months. The waves roll in and pull back, roll in and pull back. The sound of them fills every corner of the air. The salt is on my lips, and the wind is in my hair.

And I’m crying. I wasn’t planning on that, but then how could I have planned for any of this when it was a surprise?

“It’s real,” I whisper, gazing out at the majesty. “It’s actually real.”

He doesn’t say anything. He stands next to me and lets me absorb it without breaking into the moment.

After a while, we walk down to the water. I kick off my shoes first and feel the sand warm under my bare feet. The water reaches my toes, and it’s shockingly cold, making me grasp Tristan’s arm and then laugh. It’s just water, after all. Cold water on top of warm sand and a big, loud ocean that doesn’t care about me at all. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I don’t know how long he lets me stand there while the water comes in and goes out. Birds wheel overhead—actual birds, too, real ones. I’m not even afraid. I watch them and there’s no tightening of my chest, no racing of my pulse. Everything stays calm and even.

And I want to tell him. This is all because of him. He has opened the world up to me. He’s made it possible to work through the fear and see what’s on the other side, waiting for me.

But when I turn to him, prepared to pour my heart out, he’s not standing next to me anymore.

He’s on one knee. And there’s a ring in his hand.

“Oh my god,” I whisper. Now my pulse is racing, for sure.

“I had a speech.”

“Oh my god,” I repeat, with my hands crossed over my chest. Sure enough, my heart is pounding away. Please, don’t kill me now. Wouldn’t that be something? Coming all this way, reaching the happiest moment of my life, and having my heart burst out of my chest?

“Like I was saying,” he continues, “I had a speech. I worked on it for a week, and it was good. I even worked in a Godfather quote,” he adds with a smirk.

Then the smirk fades. “But I’m looking at you now, and I don’t remember any of it.” He holds up the ring. It catches the light. Simple and perfect, a single stone on a shiny platinum band. “I only know I want the rest of it. All of it. I even want the annex, Stella. I want everything. All of you.”

“You want the annex?” Apparently, my brain has decided to fixate on that single detail while the rest of me is dissolving in joy.

He barely blinks. “Every item on it.”

“Even corn mazes?”

“Even corn mazes.”

I’m laughing and crying at the same time. It’s a terrible combination when you’re also trying to say a word. It’s the easiest word I’ve ever said, but it takes me three tries to get it out because my mouth keeps doing other things, like smiling so wide it hurts and making sounds that aren’t intelligible.

“Yes,” I finally manage. “Yes. Obviously yes. A thousand times yes. Put it on before I spiral.”

He puts it on. It fits perfectly. He probably measured my finger while I was sleeping, because that’s the kind of man he is. He plans for things most people don’t think about and handles the details before you know they exist. That’s one thing that makes him perfect for me. One of so many things.

I look down at my hand, which looks like it belongs to someone else now that it’s wearing a diamond.

Then I tackle him.

He goes down at the water’s edge and the ocean rushes over our feet. Cold, so cold. I don’t care. He doesn’t seem to care either. My hands are under his shirt, and his hands are in my hair, and the ocean is right there, pulling at our feet. I kiss him with salt water on my lips and sand in my hair and twelve miles an hour of wind blowing over us.

His hands find the hem of my shirt and slide underneath, and his warm palms touch my skin at the same time a cool burst of air does. I gasp against his mouth, and he pulls back just enough to look at me. Checking, always checking.