“What’s that?”
“I want you to close your eyes.” He nodded at me to do so.
I dropped my eyelids. “Okay, now what?”
“I want you to try as hard as you can to forget when I proposed to you in Caleb’s dungeon.”
“What? Why on earth would I do that?”
I opened my eyes, ready to protest his request face-to-face, but I found Daniel kneeling on one knee under the branches of the walnut tree.
“What are you doing?”
“I want you to forget when I proposed to you before. I want you to stop thinking I did it only because I thought we were going to die—and wondering if I think you said yes only to make me happy in that moment.” He tapped the side of his forehead. “I’ve felt those worries inside of you.”
“Daniel, I…”
He held out his hand, with something small clasped in his fingers that glinted in the afternoon sun. A ring. White gold with a large round diamond in the center and a smaller purple stone on either side that reminded me of the color of my eyes.
“I want you to forget all that, because I want this to be the moment you remember. The moment we both can remember.” He cleared his throat. “Grace Divine, now that all this crap is over, and when we’re out of school, and you take some time off from kicking bad-guy butt, and healing hapless strangers,” he said, embellishing the words I’d told him he’d used the first time he proposed, “will you marry me?”
I clasped my hand to my face, as if trying hold back the tears that suddenly sprang up in my eyes. “Isn’t that just kind of a given?”
“I’d still like to hear it, so I can burn it into my amnesia-riddled brain.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll marry you.” I put my hand on my hip. “After Trenton.”
Daniel laughed. The next thing I knew, he’d engulfed me in his arms—his lips melting against mine, my fingers curling in his hair, and my body aching with so much anticipation. For us. For our future.
For the unknown.