“Can you deal with it?” she asked.
“I can’t deal without it,” he admitted. He dragged more yarn from the roll and started wrapping it around her left-hand ring finger. “I spent the first thirty-one years of my life letting go, but now that I’m staring down thirty-two, with everything I need right in front of me, I’m finding my don’t-hold-too-tight philosophy doesn’t work anymore.” With four loops around her finger, he figured she got the picture and paused. “I need to hold on.” He looped the yarn one more time. “To you.”
She picked up the yarn trailing from her ring finger and looped it around his finger. “Are you ready to be held onto as well? Ready to accept that I need to hold onto you just as much as you need to hold onto me? Ready to believe me when I say it?”
Though her words pressed the strength of his resolve, the forgiveness in her eyes warmed his chest. He rested his forehead against hers. “Yeah, Delilah Iquat. I would be lucky to be held by you.”
She sank her hand into his hair. “We’d both be lucky, Ford Langley.”
“I’d like to spend the rest of my life proving it to you.”
Her smile lit the room—or maybe the sudden, inexplicable illumination of the porch light did it—but everything glowed. “I’d like to let you.”
With yarn flowing all around them, he cupped her cheeks. “Stay with me. Forever. Marry me, Lilah?”
She sank her hands into his hair, yarn trailing from her finger. “I thought you’d never ask.”
He took her lips in a slow, sure kiss. The kind of kiss that promised a lifetime of heat, and heart, and strings so tightly tangled they amounted to a strong, single thread.
Longing deepened the kiss fast, so they barely noticed the porch light flicking on and off.