Epilogue #2
The heat finally started to ease, enough for the smoke from the fire pit to wander across the yard instead of climbing straight into the sky.
The children had burned through most of their earlier energy, their running reduced to occasional bursts between longer stretches of sitting around and recovering.
Ellie had dropped into the grass near the fire pit with Biscuit’s head sprawled across her lap.
The dog looked thoroughly content, eyes nearly closed while she scratched behind his ears.
From twenty yards away, I could see her mouth moving.
She was telling him something with great seriousness, and Biscuit appeared happy to listen for as long as she cared to keep talking.
Across the yard, the clubhouse kitchen had emptied.
Katy was gone from the window. I scanned the crowd, found her near the drink table talking to one of the Prospects’ girls, her empty plate in her hand, canted onto one hip in the posture of a woman who had been on her feet too long and was considering the merits of sitting down.
I reached into my pocket and closed my fingers around the box. I turned it once, thumb brushing the edge of the lid, then looked across the yard at Katy. I’d carried it around long enough. Thought about it long enough. There wasn’t anything left to decide.
I dropped my hand and headed through the yard toward the back porch of our house. What I needed to say to her wasn’t something I wanted to compete with motorcycles, children, and twenty conversations to be heard.
* * *
Katy sat on the back porch steps with her shoes beside her, bare feet resting on the step below.
The cookout was winding down. Most of the kids had migrated toward the fire pit, where the last coals glowed beneath a layer of ash, while the adults lingered in loose groups across the yard.
No one seemed ready to call the evening over yet.
Ellie had stretched out in the grass with Biscuit sprawled partly across her, his head on her stomach.
Her hand rested in his fur, moving occasionally when she remembered to scratch behind his ears.
After hours of running, she looked ready to fall asleep exactly where she was, and Biscuit seemed perfectly willing to join her.
I lowered myself onto the step beside Katy, close enough that our shoulders met.
She glanced at me but didn’t shift away, and I settled beside her with my arm resting against hers.
Months ago, either of us might have noticed the contact enough to think about it.
Now it was simply where I sat when there was a place beside her.
The sounds of the barbecue carried across the compound in dampened packets.
A bottle clinking against a table. Someone’s laugh, sharp and sudden, cutting through the general murmur.
The low rumble of men’s voices from the clubhouse porch where the serious drinking had moved indoors now that the children had settled.
Katy’s knee pressed against mine. Her bare foot rested beside my boot on the step below, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off her skin.
I pulled the velvet box from my pocket and rested it on my open palm between us. For a second, I watched Katy instead of opening it. Her attention dropped to the box, and I saw the exact moment she understood what it was.
I’d bought the ring three days ago. Since then, the question had been settled in my mind even if I hadn’t said it aloud. I hadn’t been waiting for some perfect moment. I’d only wanted one that belonged to us, and sitting beside her on our back porch while Ellie dozed in the grass felt right.
Katy saw it. Her breath caught -- a small, sharp inhale that traveled through her ribs and into the shoulder pressed against mine -- and she went still. Completely still. The kind of stillness that came from a body deciding, all at once, that whatever happened next deserved its full attention.
I opened the box.
The ring sat on black velvet. White-gold band, thin, unembellished except for the small round diamond set flush into the metal.
Nothing excessive. Nothing that would catch on things or require insurance or make her self-conscious when she washed her hands.
I’d chosen it because it looked like something she’d actually wear, and because the woman behind the counter had nodded when I described her and said, “She’s practical, then,” and I’d said, “She’s survived,” and the woman had understood more than I’d said, which was its own kind of relief.
Katy’s gaze found the ring. Then found my face.
Her bottom lip had caught between her teeth -- the gesture she made when something landed harder than she’d prepared for -- and the cut above her eyebrow, long since healed to a thin white line that caught the porch light at certain angles, was suddenly, startlingly present, as though the body kept receipts for everything it survived.
“Marry me, Katy.”
I kept my voice steady, but that was about the extent of my control.
I’d faced trauma bays, combat zones, and more bad outcomes than I cared to count without struggling for words.
Sitting beside Katy with a ring in my hand was apparently different.
I looked at her while I spoke, refusing to retreat into the composure that usually came so easily.
She deserved to see exactly how much this mattered to me.
Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Whatever word lived behind her teeth -- and there was a word, I could see it forming, the particular shape of a syllable that had gravity and intention -- never made it to air.
Footsteps pounded across the gravel behind us, fast and unmistakably headed our way.