Page 169 of A Smile Full of Lies
He pulled back, just enough to look at me. His jaw was tight. His eyes glassy.
“You think I’m ever letting you go after this?”
I didn’t answer. Because we both knew he would never let me out of his sight again.
Then he whispered, softly, so low I barely heard it, “I have a ring.”
My breath stopped.
He reached up and cupped my cheek.
“I bought it before you left for the writing retreat. After the hospital. After you almost fucking died and I realized I never wanted to waste another second not calling you mine.”
Tears welled again.
“You were going to wait?”
He nodded.
“Until the book came out. Until you knew the whole truth about me. Until you were ready. Until I could look you in the eye and ask you without any shadows left between us. I just didn’t expect we’d get all that done in one day.”
I choked on a laugh-sob, burying my face in his chest again.
And he just kissed the top of my head, then whispered, “We’re getting married, Ros. It’s not a question.”
I nodded into him.
“Okay.”
“Not later,” he said. “Not next year. Not when the press dies down. We’re doing this soon. Quiet. Just us. The second it feels right.”
“Okay,” I whispered again.
Because there was nothing else to say.
We stayed like that a long time. Curled up in the wreckage of the morning, wrapped in love and grief and the story that had nearly killed us both.
But now? Now it was out in the world. And I was in his arms.
And that was all that mattered.
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
DECEMBER 9
KNOX
She was sittingon the living room floor when I found her the next morning.
Dressed in one of my old Stonewood University crewnecks and black shorts, laptop open, legs crossed, shoulders tense. Her hair was still damp from the shower. Her blue light blocking glasses slid low on her nose, eyes wide behind the lenses, scrolling like the world was on fire.
And in a way, it was. The book had detonated.
What We Buried in Stonewoodwas already trending.
#1 in True Crime.
