Epilogue #2
The first press of his mouth made my knees soften.
The second made me clutch his shirt. By the time the kiss deepened, the breeze, the mixer, the water, the whole glowing resort had faded to a backdrop beneath the much more urgent fact of Micah’s mouth on mine and the way he held me there as if he had all the time in the world and all the reason.
When I pulled back, it was only because I had to breathe.
Micah’s forehead rested against mine, and for a second, neither of us said anything.
Then his hands slid from my waist to my hands, fingers threading through mine in a way so deliberate it made my pulse kick harder before I even knew why.
“What?” I whispered.
“You remember wanting to know what your father asked me at Labor Day?”
I had thought of it all the time. Neither he nor my father would budge, and my mother would not utter a peep, talking about the covenant of marriage like she had suddenly taken up legal counsel.
“Yes?”
“I told him I wasn’t gonna do anything but come correct before I asked you anything.”
The world went still around me.
Somewhere behind us, somebody laughed too loud over a glass.
His voice had gone that quiet, serious way it only did when he was carrying something too heavy to play with.
Micah held my eyes.
“Have I been coming correct?”
Tears rose before I had the dignity to stop them.
I searched his face, his beautiful dark brown eyes, the steadiness in them, the love in them, the truth I had spent months learning how to trust because he kept giving me the same man every time.
“Yes, baby,” I whispered.
He smiled in a tender way that nearly broke me open before anything else happened.
Then he let go of one of my hands.
And knelt.
The sound that left me did not belong to a woman trying to hold herself together in public. It belonged to a woman whose whole heart had just been lifted into view in front of her.
Micah reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring that caught the last of the sunset and the first of the moonlight at once.
This was a rock.
The kind of diamond that did not enter a room quietly and had no reason to. It sat on a delicate band that only made the center stone look more outrageous, more intentional, more like a man had gone looking for something beautiful enough to hold the weight of what he meant.
My breath left me.
Because I knew that ring.
Months ago, when Kendra and I had fallen into one of those luxury jewelry stores after I’d spent an irresponsible amount of money at Ross Park and pretended it was emotional regulation, I had stood over a glass case and pointed at a ring I would never in my life buy for myself.
I had laughed and said, “If a man ever asks me for something, I want it to look like he knew I was worth being unreasonable about.”
Kendra, traitor that she was, had clearly carried that line straight to the enemy.
I put one hand over my mouth and cried immediately.
Not pretty tears, but the real kind.
Because this man had listened to me even when I wasn’t speaking to him directly. Because he had loved me enough to ask the women around me what I would never have thought he was paying attention to. Because the ring in his hand looked like intention, desire, and permanence all at once.
Micah looked up at me from one knee, his own face softer than I had ever seen it, and when he spoke, his voice shook just enough to tell me this was moving him too.
“Talia,” he said, “you changed my real life. Not the surface of it. Not the parts people clap at. The real part. The mornings. The quiet. The peace in me.” He swallowed once. “You made me braver. You made me honest. You made me stop hiding from the best thing I’ve ever had standing in front of me.”
My tears were falling full now.
I nodded once, helplessly, because I could not do anything else.
He kept going.
“I love you. I know what it is to choose you now, in public and in private, in rooms and outside them, on good days and hard ones, for the rest of my life.” He took one breath, then another. “Will you marry me?”
I was already nodding.
Could barely see him through the tears.
Could barely trust my own mouth not to break open around the feeling.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Then stronger, because he deserved to hear it clear.
“Yes.”
Something in his face gave way then. Joy. Relief. Love.
All of it.
He stood fast and slipped the ring onto my finger with hands that were steadier than mine had any chance of being. Then he caught my face between both palms and kissed me while I was still crying and smiling and trying to breathe through the biggest yes of my life.
Behind us, the terrace had started noticing.
A few little sounds. A cheer somewhere. A glass lifted in the distance.
I did not care. Not even a little bit, because Micah’s mouth was on mine and the ring was on my hand and the whole world had finally arranged itself around the simplest truth it had taken me years to trust.
Love was real.
Love could stay.
Love could be peaceful and intense and honest all at once.
When he pulled back, he rested his forehead against mine and laughed softly, like he still could not quite believe he had made it to this exact moment.
“You said yes,” he murmured.
I laughed through tears. “I did.”
He kissed me once more, gentler this time.
Then he looked down at my hand in his, at the ring glinting there in the island light, and his smile went deep enough to live in my chest too.
“I told him I’d keep showing you,” he said quietly.
“You did.”
“And I will.”
I believed him.
I believed him because he had already spent months proving what his love looked like when it had to live through ordinary days. Through misunderstanding. Through family rooms. Through softness. Through fear. Through joy.
He had come correct.
And now, standing at the edge of the island night with his hands warm around mine and my yes still trembling in the air between us, I let myself feel the full peace of that.
Mine.
His.
Ours.
In real life.
Later, back in our suite, the world finally went quiet.
The balcony doors were open, sheer curtains moving with the ocean breeze, the sound of the water slipping into the room like a blessing.
My orange dress lay somewhere near the foot of the bed.
His white shirt hung open on his body because I had stopped having the patience for buttons halfway through the door.
Micah stood behind me while I looked at the ring again in the soft light.
I had looked at it in the elevator.
In the hallway.
At least four times between the door and the bedroom.
He laughed low behind me. “You like it?”
I looked at him through the mirror. “You know I like it.”
“I know you deserve it.”
That shut me up.
He came closer and took my hand, lifting it so the ring caught another flash of light.
“My fiancée,” he said, voice low.
The word moved through me slowly.
Fiancée.
His.
Named.
Chosen.
I turned into him and pressed my hands to his chest.
“My fiancé,” I said, letting myself taste it.
The smile that pulled across his face was so beautiful it made my throat ache.
Then he kissed me.
Soft at first.
Then not.
He kissed me with the balcony doors open and the island breathing around us, with the ring on my hand and his heart finally safe in mine.
He kissed me until my back met the wall, until my fingers glided over his hair, until the last little edge of public celebration gave way to the private truth we had always been best at finding with our bodies.
Micah still touched me like patience was something he respected right up until he didn’t. His mouth still knew how to make my body forget dignity. His hands still opened me with that same sure, hungry tenderness that had ruined me for every man before him.
But underneath it, there was no question.
No shadow.
No bracing.
Only us.
Only his mouth at my throat, my ring flashing against his hair when I held him to me, his voice rough against my skin when he said, “I love you, Talia,” like he had not just said it in front of God, the ocean, and half a rooftop.
Only me whispering it back while he carried me to the bed.
Only the kind of love that had learned how to live out loud and still come home soft.
By the time the moon had risen high over San Juan and Micah’s body was warm and heavy beside mine, I lay tucked into him with my left hand resting on his chest and my ring catching little pieces of light every time he breathed.
My hair was done for.
My makeup was gone.
My heart was wide open and no longer trying to apologize for it.
Micah kissed my temple in the dark.
“You good?” he asked.
That question.
Always simple.
Always steady.
Always reaching the place that mattered.
I smiled against his chest and closed my eyes.
“Yes,” I whispered.
And I meant it.
In every way that counted.
THE END
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