Prologue #2
“Let’s not get into specifics.” He takes both my hands in his, and his fingers are trembling around mine.
“The point is, you notice things. That’s what made me fall in love with you.
You notice the book someone’s pretending to read and the song they hum when they think no one’s listening.
You noticed me when I was just some overdressed idiot haunting the research desk, and you kept noticing me, and you wrote it all down-”
“You know about the notes?”
My voice comes out strangled. The notes were supposed to be secret. Little messages I’d slip into his books, his briefcase, his coat pockets when he wasn’t looking. Tiny pieces of myself I was too scared to say out loud.
“ - and hid it in my life like Easter eggs-”
“You weren’t supposed to find those-”
“ - and I have spent the last year trying to figure out how to deserve that kind of attention.”
He lets go of one of my hands, reaches into his back pocket, and pulls out his wallet. From the wallet comes a folded piece of paper, soft at the creases, almost falling apart, the edges fuzzy from being handled too many times.
My handwriting. The first note I ever hid for him.
This one’s better if you read the last chapter first.
“You kept it,” I whisper.
“It lives in my wallet.” He doesn’t look up from the paper.
“It has never once left my wallet. I never mentioned it because I was terrified that if I acknowledged it, you’d get self-conscious and stop, and I would rather die than lose the feeling of finding your handwriting somewhere I wasn’t expecting it. ”
I can’t speak.
I can’t breathe.
He folds the note with infinite care, slides it back into his wallet, and reaches into his jacket pocket.
“So.”
He lowers himself to one knee.
Oh, fuck.
“Oh my god.”
“Juliette Holland.”
“Oh my god.”
“You are the love of my life.” His voice cracks on the word love, and there are tears running down his face now, and mine too, both of us an absolute disaster in the middle of the stacks. “I want to spend every day of the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”
The ring box is open in his palm.
I can barely see it in the dim light, but the stone catches what little glow exists.
I should say yes.
I should say yes immediately, the way people do in movies, with joy and certainty and none of this messy sobbing.
Instead, I make him wait.
“You rehearsed this.”
His laugh is wet and wrecked. “I had cue cards in the car.”
“Cue cards?”
“I didn’t want to forget anything important.” He’s still on one knee, looking up at me like I’m holding his whole future, which, to be fair, I am. “I practiced in the car on the way here. Dennis watched the whole thing through the windshield. He’s never going to let me live it down.”
“Dennis knows?”
“Dennis has known for weeks. He’s been insufferable about it.” His voice cracks. “He kept making comments about how libraries are romantic. I think he was trying to be supportive. It came across as threatening.”
I’m laughing now, which is absurd, because I’m also crying, and my heart is doing its level best to kill me. “You told Dennis before you told me.”
“I had to book the building, Juliette. You can’t bribe a man spontaneously. There was a negotiation. He countered. Twice.”
“Dennis countered.”
“Dennis is a shark. The final terms were the envelope, plus a promise that you’d personally recommend him a good thriller.” He’s smiling, but his eyes are terrified, and the ring box has developed a fine tremor. “I panicked. I didn’t know what security guards read.”
“You made cue cards and bribed a guard. For a marriage proposal. In a library.”
“In my defense, I was fucking terrified.”
“Zachary.”
“Is that a no?”
“It’s your name.”
“It’s not an answer.” His voice breaks completely.
The composure that runs board meetings is nowhere in the building.
“Juliette. I’m dying here. I’m actually dying.
My knee hurts and my heart is going to explode and I need you to say something, anything, even if it’s no, even if it’s ‘Zachary, you absolute disaster of a human being, what made you think this was a good idea - ’”
“Get up.”
“What?”
“Get up.” I grab his lapels and haul him off the floor, pulling him into me so hard we both stumble backward into the stacks. His shoulder hits Dickens. A book falls. Neither of us reaches for it. “Obviously yes. Obviously. Did you really think I was going to say no?”
“I thought you might say ‘not yet.’” His arms wrap around me so tight I can barely breathe. “I thought you might say ‘ask me again when you’ve earned it.’”
“You’ve earned it.”
“I haven’t. I haven’t even come close.” He says it into my hair, absolutely certain, the surest I’ve ever heard him about anything. “But I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying.”
“Shut up.” I’m crying into his shoulder now, ruining a jacket that costs more than my rent, and I don’t care, and neither does he. “Shut up and let me say yes properly.”
“You already said yes.”
“I said obviously yes. That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s better.” He pulls back just far enough to look at me, his face wet, his smile so wide it has to hurt. “Obviously yes is better than yes. Obviously yes means you didn’t even have to think about it.”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?”
“I’ve known longer than you have.” The words come out before I can stop them, raw and true and terrifying.
“I’ve known since the night you read to me until I fell asleep and I woke up to find you’d marked my page.
I’ve known since you showed up at midnight with flowers you picked from someone else’s garden because you couldn’t find a florist open-”
“The garden was public property.”
“It was the Hallorans’ front yard.”
“They have too many roses. They didn’t miss them.” He’s laughing now, or crying, or both; at this range it’s the same weather. “You’ve known that long?”
“I’ve known that long.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”