Page 44 of Will You (Not) Marry Me

Eva was spun around, and there was Finn, his hands on her waist, his face flushed and breath heavy from running, looking down at her with a small smile lighting up his face.

“Hi?” Eva mumbled.

It was a stupid, empty thing to say, given the situation, but it was the first thing to fall out of her mouth. Finn just laughed, looking a million times happier than he had just a few minutes ago. He looked over his shoulder as if he himself was going to get grabbed from behind.

“Come on, in here,” he said, still slightly out of breath, taking Eva’s hand and pulling her through a doorway into an empty room. It was some sort of guest suite, with a large bed occupying one wall. Eva had the ridiculous thought of wanting to lie down on the soft-looking blankets and pillows.

Maybe she was delirious. This all certainly felt like a hallucination.

Finn closed the door behind them and stood there listening intently for a few moments. Sure enough, they heard hurried footsteps passing by, voices talking to each other, sounding concerned and maybe even a little angry. And Finn’s name called out as if he’d gone missing.

Eva waited patiently by the bed, feeling like she was floating. Once the voices and footsteps had passed and there was a good minute of silence from the other side of the door, Finn turned around and smiled at her.Smiledwasn’t really a strong enough word for it, though. Beamed was more appropriate. Like a lighthouse on the darkest of nights.

Before she could ask what was going on, before she could say anything at all, Finn practically leaped towards her and scooped her up into his arms, holding her tight. Eva’s breath was knocked from her, but not because of the tightness of his grip on her. It’s more the shock of it all. Surely she was dreaming? She had just been giving herself a stern talking-to about not expecting anything to change, and now she was in Finn’s arms.

But as his grip around her didn’t loosen, as the whole scene around her didn’t dissipate into vapor, Eva allowed herself to put her hands up to Finn’s back, to press her palms against the soft fabric of his shirt and feel the solidness of him underneath.

“Where’d your suit jacket go?” she asked stupidly, not sure what else to say, her words muffled by his chest. Finn chuckled, and Eva felt the vibrations of it through her whole body, and it was possibly the best feeling she’d ever experienced. Before he answered, Finn pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and that was when she lost any semblance of composure and started crying.

“I have no idea, honestly,” he said, still laughing. “I got placed back in front of the camera, everyone freaking out that I’d nearly missed the time slot… I thought my mother might have an aneurysm. And just as they were counting down to go live and I’m supposed to talk about my new engagement and the future of Eschenberg, I couldn’t do it.”

Eva was too scared to look up at his face, to read whatever expression was there. His voice sounded surprised though—surprised that events had gone so suddenly in this direction.

“So I just left,” he continued, with that awestruck tone. “I left and came to find you as quickly as I could. I couldn’t let you leave, not again. And between there and here, I guess my jacket got lost somewhere in the chaos.”

“Why?” asked Eva.Why abandon all of that stability for me? Why threaten your relationship with your parents once again? Why risk your own reputation? Why do all of that for me?

The list of questions flitted through her mind faster than she could comprehend, but Eva didn’t even need to speak the implied questions out loud. Finn knew instantly what she meant.

“Because I love you,” he said simply, speaking the words into the hair on top of her head.

Eva hugged him back tighter, not caring at this moment that she was probably getting tears and day-old makeup all over his shirt.

“I love you too,” she said back, sounding half-strangled as she forced the words out.

“If you’ll have me,” Finn said. “I would really, really like to be a father.”

At that, Finn pried Eva off of his chest, his hands moving back to her face as Eva finally scrounged up the bravery to look up at him. Finn looked happy, absolutely delighted, as he looked down at her. Slowly she started to believe that this might be really happening after all, and not just some sick joke cooked up by her overtired brain.

Finn wiped the tears from her face, which he seemed to be doing a lot. But he just smiled down at her as if she was the most beautiful thing in the world.

“I’d like to be a partner to you too,” he said.

“Are you proposing again?” asked Eva, laughing at the twists and turns of it all.

“No,” said Finn. And now Eva really did have whiplash.

“No,” he continued, still gently stroking her face. “I don’t want to make you my wife. Not yet, anyway. I want to make you mypartner. In all things. My equal for everything. Not a trophy. Not a chess piece in international relations. My partner that I love. The mother of my child. That’s all I want.”

He shrugged, so easy and light as if the weight of the world had been lifted off of his shoulders for the first time.

“I’m going to do things my way,” he said, firm and gentle all at the same time. “If they’re going to have me step up in the next few years, or even sooner, and take the throne, then I’m going to do it my way. Our way.”

He stilled his hand on her cheek, and Eva’s skin warmed beneath his palm.

“We’re the next generation. We can change how things are done. Who says we can’t? And if they don’t like it well, too bad. We’ll be the ones in charge. Your job isn’t to sit by my side like a pretty ornament. It’s to be yourself. That’s all.”

“That’s harder than it looks sometimes,” Eva said quietly, not quite able to meet the intensity in his eyes.

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