His face cracks into a wide smile, and he starts laughing.
“Did I fool you for a second?” he asks, and I bite my lips together, trying not to laugh myself.
“With your story about having to get cider on a Sunday night?” I ask, tilting my head to one side.
“Come on, it wasn’t that bad.”
“Seth,” I say, and take his face in my hands. “You’re not a good liar. I love you so much, but you can’t lie.”
He’s still smiling, and he leans in until our foreheads and noses are touching, his fingers in my hair again.
“Marry me anyway?” he asks, softly.
I feel like I’m soaring. Even though I knew what was coming, I’m instantly giddy, lighter than air.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, of course.”
I kiss him fervently, feeling like I might bubble over. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and he lifts me up, and we laugh and kiss and he swings me around and I yelp, then laugh some more.
Finally, he puts me down and reaches into his pocket. I’m expecting a box but the ring is just in his fingers, glinting in the light.
It doesn’t look anything like my other rings. Not the one that he threw into the woods; not the one that Nolan gave me that I donated to an auction for a women’s shelter last year.
This one looks vintage and art deco, the stone set deeply into the metal.
I look closer, and realize there’s something in the stone. Seth clears his throat.
“Maybe a year ago, I came across this jewelry maker who makes jewelry with carvings in the backs of the stones, so that when you look at it from the front, it looks like there’s something inside,” he says.
I look closer and realize it’s a bird, wings spread.
“I thought you’d like it,” he says, takes my hand, and slides it onto my finger.
“I love it,” I say. “I love you.”
“I love you more.”
We kiss. On the barn, the mural glows, and the stars shine above, and the breeze whispers through the lush foliage of the forest, through the grass below our feet.
“I want to take back something I said once,” he tells me when we break the kiss.
“About how I must have been raised by wolves if I think I can put a plastic bowl in the dishwasher?” I ask, gently.
“Absolutely not,” he says, grinning. “I’ll stand by that until my dying day.”
“It was on the top rack,” I point out.
“About how I’d take anything back,” he says. “I told you once that if I could undo the past, I would.”
He winds a curl around one finger, watches my face.
“But that’s what it took to get here,” he says, simply. “And this makes everything else worth it. If changed that I’d change this, and I would never change this.”
I swallow hard, because there’s a lump in my throat.
“Me either,” I say. “You’re worth the fight, Seth.”
He kisses me again: gentle and slow, full of promise, longing just below the surface.
“I would do anything for this,” he murmurs. “Fight any fight. Climb any mountain. Sacrifice every valuable thing in my life. This is worth it. You’re worth it.”
We stand there for a long time, on the grass, under the stars. We talk about love and we talk about raccoons and we talk about the past and we talk about whether we should rearrange the living room, all the lofty and banal things that make up a life together.
I know it’s anything but easy, but standing here with him, I do know this: it’s simple. Love is simple. Everything surrounding it can be hard and messy and complicated, but at the center of it all, love is sweet, clear, and true.
Finally, we walk back to his car, hand in hand. We drive home. We sleep in the same bed, wake up next to one another that morning and the next and the next, and it’s not perfection, but it’s always him, and it makes my heart leap.
For Seth, my heart always leaps.
The End
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Eli Loveless was my nemesis from the first day of kindergarten until we graduated high school. Everything I did, he had to do better - and vice versa. The day he left town was the best day of my life.
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Kostya’s quiet, serious, and straight-laced, the heir to a centuries-old throne.
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I’m the ambassador’s daughter, backpacking Europe after dropping out of med school.
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He might not know how to smile. I accidentally got drunk at my own welcome banquet.
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Reign
A royal romance
Roxie Noir
Chapter One
Hazel
Something clangs right above my head, and I wake up with a snort.
“Passport!” the uniformed man says.
He’s very loud, very gruff, and staring down at me with the sort of flat, serious irritation only an Eastern European can muster. His accent is so thick that it takes me a moment to figure out what he’s saying, and I just stare up at him, mouth partly open.
The customs officer puts his hand on the luggage rack above my head and leans in, just a little.
“Passport,” he says, very slowly.
“Right,” I say. “Yes. Of course. Da.”
He steps back, I stand, and the papers that were on my lap slide to the floor.
“Shit,” I mutter, but everyone else in the compartment is totally silent. “Sorry. Sorry. Prosti.”
The uniformed man takes another step back, this time to the door of the train compartment, and just stares at me. Totally stone-faced. The compartment is full, but no one moves to pick anything up.
Thanks, guys, I think. I’m starting to sweat.
First things first. I need my damn passport so Mr. Ice Carving over here can move on with his rounds, then I can pick up my shit.
I grab my frame pack, sling it onto the seat, open the main compartment and slide my hand into the slim inner pocket. Then I fish around, feeling for the skinny booklet.
It’s not there. I shove my hand in further. Nothing. I push my entire arm into my backpack, my hair falling in front of my eyes, sticking in the velcro fasteners.
“Sorry,” I say. “Prosti, prosti...”
Still nothing. My heart is doing flips, and I’m frantically trying to remember the last time I saw my passport.
I had it when I got to the Ukraine four days ago, I think. I had it when I checked into the hostel in Kiev.
Jesus, did I leave it there?