Page 108 of Reclaim Me

His lips part, and my heart starts to pound, anticipating his wrath, his fire, his hurt, but he’s remarkably calm as he takes my left hand in his right and runs his thumb across each of my ring-less digits.

“You didn’t say yes.”

I pull my hand back, tucking it behind my back. “I did. I took the ring off before I came in here because I didn’t want you to see it.”

Hunter studies me with dark eyes that see too much. “When did he ask you?”

“Tonight. At dinner.”

He checks his watch, arching a brow when it reveals that it’s not even ten yet. “You’ve been engaged for all of five minutes, and instead of spending the night celebrating with your fiancé, you came here to me.”

Something about his calm tone and even calmer demeanor makes me feel like I’ve been stripped down, lain bare, like the whole of every complication I’ve allowed to exist around the mess that is my life has suddenly been made simple.

“I—” My plan is to defend myself, to explain to him that I rushed over here because I wanted to be the person to tell him, that I didn’t want Riley to call and let it slip, but once again, the big, elaborate speech deserts me, leaving me with a stupid response. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

But it does. Doesn’t it? Just like my inability to say I love the man I’ve spent the last seven years of my life with means something. Just like the ease with which I say I love you to Hunter means something.

Hunter scoffs. “Of course, it means something, Sunshine. It means you said yes, but you didn’t mean it. It means there’s still time.”

“Time for what?” I ask, thrown off kilter when he takes a sudden step back and turns back toward his desk. I watch him pull open the top drawer on the right-hand side and pluck something out. It’s not until he’s walking towards me again that I realize what it is.

A square, black box.

He doesn’t open it until he’s standing right in front of me, but I already know what’s inside. Knowing doesn’t stop me from being shocked when I see the gold band of a ring nestled inside the lines of the black silk. The small diamonds surrounding the larger center stone fan out into little triangles that look like a sunburst. I cover my mouth and shake my head in disbelief.

He can’t be doing this.

There’s no way he’s actually doing this.

“Time,” he says, finally answering the question I asked before I lost my ability to speak altogether, “for me to give you another option, a better option.”

“Hunter.”

“I’m the better option, Rae,” he says, placing the box in my hand. It doesn’t escape my notice that the fear and panic that swirled in my veins when Aaron was presenting me with a ring earlier tonight isn’t there now. All I feel is the quiet hum of inevitability mixed with the very real dredging of doubt. Not about Hunter, per se, but about me, about us.

“You don’t have to take the option right now,” Hunter says. His eyes soft and sincere as they trace my features. “I’ve had that ring for over a decade, and it can wait a little longer. I can wait a little longer.”

“How much longer?” I blurt, heat flooding my cheeks because I shouldn’t be asking him that. I should be handing him back the ring and telling him I’m marrying Aaron. The only problem is, I can’t.

Joy skates across Hunter’s features, and it’s so bright, so pure, anyone looking at him would think I’d just agreed to forever, not asked him how long he’d wait to have it with me.

“A year.” He moves toward me again, bringing his hand up to cup my chin, urging me to look him in the eyes. “A year from now, when you trust me, when we’re settled into raising our daughter and know all the ins and outs of co-parenting. If you still love me, if you still want me, then you’ll meet me at the place where you saved my life, and we’ll finally give ourselves the chance to live it together.” He comes down, dropping a single, soft kiss on my lips before flicking his gaze up to mine. “Deal?”

For the second time tonight, I find myself making a commitment, but when I agree to Hunter’s proposition, I don’t feel a single ounce of regret. “Deal.”

It’s easy to feel like I’ve made the right decision when I’m standing in Hunter’s orbit, surrounded by all the love we have for each other and the faith he has in us, but the moment I leave it, that certainty starts to wane.

Buckling under the weight of the realities I’ve yet to face. The first of which is Aaron, who is waiting outside of Dee and Jayla’s house when I arrive because once I left my own birthday party, Dee smelled trouble and went to pick her up from Marcy. I don’t think either of them would hurt Riley, but I’m grateful that she’s with Dee all the same. Especially because it gives me a chance to have this conversation with Aaron without worrying about her overhearing.

He’s still in his car when I pull up in Dee’s driveway, so I walk over and climb into the passenger seat with his ring in my hand instead of on it.

“You’re not wearing your ring,” he says, looking out the window and not at me.

I set the ring in question on the console between us. “I can’t marry you, Aaron.”

“You said yes.” Anger and almost a decade’s worth of resentment are packed into those three words. “You said yes in front of everyone I know, my co-workers, my boss, my clients, and now you’re taking it back? What am I supposed to tell everybody?”

It should sting that he’s more concerned about breaking the news to his friends than he is upset about losing me, but it doesn’t, which is just more proof that we had no business holding on to each other for as long as we did.

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