Chapter 9 Jack
NINE
JACK
“The issue with doing it that way is that I simply don’t want to do it that way.”
“Jack,” Isla spits. “Just give me the goddamn ring.”
“No, thank you.”
If I hand over the engagement ring and she puts it on privately, then doesn’t that cheapen the experience for us both? Doesn’t it erase the moment entirely?
She makes a surprise attack, lunging at me across her dining room table, grabbing for my sweatpants pocket. We’ve been at this for hours already. Isla ended another late-night shift at Luxe, and I came to her house in the middle of the fucking night to discuss wedding logistics.
Her insistence. My displeasure.
Nimble fingers close around the velvet box, pressing it against me in a way that’s deeply unfair. When she yanks it free in triumph, she misjudges her momentum and lands squarely in my lap with a solid oomph that rattles the chair.
“Oh, freckles,” I say, tossing up my hands. “No need for a whole show. If you want to get in my pants, you just need to ask.”
Her eyes flash. Instead of scrambling off, she shifts, settling more deliberately, knees bracketing my hips as she lifts the box high over our heads.
“What did I say about making jokes?”
I smirk. “That you secretly enjoy them.”
She glares down at me, still wriggling, and honestly, death beneath Isla doesn’t sound like the worst way to go.
She has the kind of hips a man could lose his religion over, wide and soft and made for my hands.
I’ve thought about grabbing onto them more than once, and right now, she’s not helping the cause.
“I’m not letting you do a formal proposal,” she says.
“Fine. Just let me put the ring on you.”
I grasp her hips, stilling her before she can feel exactly how much trouble she’s initiating. I’m about two seconds from giving her something else to yell about, and I don’t need to get hard with a ring box in my hand.
She freezes, breath hitching.
I had planned this all differently. I brought the ring here thinking I’d do things somewhat properly. I’ve been thinking a lot about what she said about wanting it to be real. About a man getting down on one knee, loving her out loud, offering her a future instead of a workaround.
And even if this wasn’t meant to be that, I wanted it to feel intentional.
But Isla and I have never once wanted the same thing in the same way.
She stares down at me, jaw tight. “You’re annoying.”
“That’s why you’re so damn nice to me all the time.”
“If you get down on one knee, I will actually be kicking you out of here.”
I grin. “Deal.”
I ease the black box from her fingers.
Her eyes lift to mine and stay there.
With her still in my lap and the ring between us, it stops feeling like a joke and starts feeling like something I’m not ready to name. Something I definitely don’t trust myself to examine too closely.
I pinch my thigh hard enough to register pain, to anchor myself back in my body. This is a plan. This is logistics. This is not my goddamn fantasy.
“Get up,” she says. “We need to do this like adults.”
“That’s never been our strong suit,” I say, but I let my hands fall away from her body.
She slides off my lap and stands, smoothing her palms down her thighs. I stay seated, watching her pace to the end of the table, where the paperwork waits.
I stand and open the velvet box.
The ring catches the lamplight. I still think it’s fucking perfect, and I hope she does, too. It’s the kind of ring that belongs on a woman like her. Gorgeous and complicated and perfect.
Her breath goes shallow.
I don’t kneel. I promised her I wouldn’t, and more than that, I know she’d bolt if I did.
Instead, I step close enough to see her pulse pound in her neck. “Isla Winslow,” I say. “I’m not good at speeches. I know that about myself. I talk first and think later, and then I spend three days wishing I’d shut up.”
Her mouth curves despite her obvious effort to keep it neutral.
“But this isn’t me being clever,” I continue. “I know exactly what this is. I know why we’re doing it. I know it’s paperwork and deadlines and a system that was never designed to give you room to breathe.”
Her gray-blue eyes soften a fraction.
“I’m not promising forever in the romantic sense,” I say, choosing each word carefully.
“I’m promising to show up. To sign what needs signing.
I’m promising to take the heat when it comes, because it will, and to stay put when things get uncomfortable.
I’m promising not to bow out just because this stops being convenient. ”
The silence stretches. Filled with weight, with years of shared history and all the things we never said out loud. “Will you marry me?” I finish, lifting the ring. “For the plan, for the orchard, for as long as you damn well need.”
“Yes, I will,” she says. “And thank you for doing this for me. For not making me feel ridiculous. For not pretending this is something it isn’t. And the ring—it’s perfect, really.”
Relief rushes through me so fast it nearly knocks me sideways. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She shakes off the tension, a full-body reset through both shoulders. “But can we agree not to get sappy after this? It’s too much for me.”
“Deal.”
I take her hand, fingers trembling. The ring slides on easily, settling into place as if it knows exactly where it belongs. Emerald green and gold, a perfect fit for her.
We both stare at it.
“Well,” she says eventually. “We’re engaged.”
I laugh because it feels safer than saying anything else. I never gave much thought to marriage beyond the vague assumption that one day I’d settle down, buy a bigger house, and then figure out the rest as I went.
But a whole life with Isla, I think, might just make sense. We’d get to fight and fuck and build something stubborn together forever. Wouldn’t that be a whole lot more than just convenient?
We sit back at the table, the moment filed away for later examination, and she pushes the nearest legal pad toward me. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s review.”
At the top of the page, she’s written in block letters: THE PLAN.
I read down the list slowly.
“Wedding date,” I say. “Three weeks from now.”
“Any later and we miss the grant cycle,” she replies.
“Venue,” I continue. “Courthouse. Small reception at the Harbor Light after.”
“Elsie and Winnie are already fighting about centerpieces,” she says. “I told them minimal decor.”
I snort. “Good luck enforcing that.”
“As you know, I can be very persuasive when it comes to getting what I want.”
“Guest list,” I read, pointedly ignoring the urge to respond with something suggestive. “Twenty-five people. Town only.”
“Plus your parents,” she adds. “And your sister.”
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Mel’s gonna riot about not having our cousins there.”
“That’s a future problem,” she says firmly.
I scribble a note in the margin and keep going.
“Flowers,” I read. “Winnie.”
“Obviously.”
“Food,” I say. “Could we just have Johnny bring some fried haddock and chowder to Harbor Light?”
“Yeah, that would be good.”
“Drinks?” I ask.
She taps the page. “Mirabelle wine and whatever’s on tap.”
We reach the next section.
“Public behavior,” I read aloud. “Hold hands. Sit together. One kiss.”
“One,” she repeats.
“I reserve the right to make it convincing.”
We’ve crossed a hundred lines already. I held her hand at her great-aunt’s funeral. She slept against my shoulder in the back pew. I wiped her tears after her dad’s diagnosis. She’s now, unfortunately, straddled my lap.
A kiss hardly feels like the most dangerous thing on the list.
She exhales and gestures to the next page.
“After,” I read. “I move into the cottage.”
I read the line twice, trying not to look too interested. The cottage. Her space. Her mornings and mess and half-finished lists. I’ve wanted more access to her life for years. Apparently, fraud is the route that finally gets me there.
“When should I do that?”
“Immediately,” she says. “Optics. It also gives us the chance finish the grant applications together during that first week.”
“I already blocked my schedule.”
Her head snaps up. “You did?”
“This isn’t something I’m fitting in around other things.”
She blinks at me like I’ve wrong-footed her.
I keep reading until I reach the last section.
ENDING PLANS.
The page is blank. No bullet points or notes scribbled in Isla’s hand.
How do we end a marriage? I wonder silently, staring at the empty paper. Is it just another form? Another signature?
I write one line at the bottom.
END DATE: TBD
She watches me do it. “Shouldn’t we talk about it? We have everything else lined up, so we probably ought to figure this one out, too.”
I cap the pen and set it down with a sigh. “We can talk about it. But how do we slap an expiration date on this when we have no clue what the future holds?”
She exhales through her nose. “I don’t want this to drag on forever.”
I grit my teeth. “I know that.”
“I need to know there’s an out,” she says. “A clean one. No drama or guilt.”
“You have one.”
She laughs. “I’m talking about you.”
“Oh, then problem solved because I don’t need one. Not when we don’t know what the next year looks like. Not when everything’s still theoretical.”
Her eyes flick up to mine, searching. She’s looking for the angle, the hidden clause, the part where I benefit and she doesn’t. She’s trying to figure out whether this is kindness or avoidance, whether I’m protecting her or myself.
I don’t have a clean answer for that.
“What if we just put down one year?”
“One year? That’s it?”
The spring rain taps once against the window. Somewhere in the house, a pipe ticks as it cools. I could use a glass of plum wine right about now. Or maybe a bottle.
She likes plans. She longs for certainty. But how do you promise that when the whole point of this is to survive a stretch of life neither of us can actually predict?
“If we don’t set a real date, what if you wake up one day and realize you’re done with me?”
I frown. “I won’t.”
“You could.”
“I’m a man of my fucking word, Isla.” I meet her gaze. “If you want a clear out, I won’t trap you. I don’t need to trick a woman into staying married to me. We’re doing this with both eyes open.”
“Okay, hotshot.” She gives a thick swallow. “I’ll add a small caveat. End date: 1 year from contract signing pending six-month case review. If circumstances change at the midterm mark, the end date will be reassessed.”
I snort. “Very formal. Didn’t know you were such a romantic.”
“When it comes to you,” she says, “I’m downright sentimental.