Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
GAGE
The office was quiet.
Final drafts had been signed, meetings cleared. There was nothing left on the calendar.
Except the thing he hadn’t written down.
The ring had been sitting in the drawer for months.
He’d waited as long as he could. Longer, even—because he hadn’t wanted to trap her. But there was no time left.
Gage leaned back in the chair. The city below him was washed in light, sharp and endless.
There had been other women. Clean matches. Flawless credentials. No tension, no confusion. They fit his life, his image, his future.
They’d admired the crown.
Only Bea had touched the man wearing it.
He knew her hesitation. Felt it like a living thing between them. But waiting hadn’t made it disappear.
There was only one honest move left.
Because she was always going to be the one he asked.
The restaurant was suspended above the city like a secret. A rooftop terrace, glass-walled and candlelit, its edges disappearing into the skyline. The kind of place you didn’t find by accident. You were brought here—by reservation, by name, by design.
Of course he’d booked it out.
There were only six tables on the entire terrace. Each placed with deliberate distance, each turned slightly toward the city as if to suggest privacy without isolation.
And then there were the details.
A set of low blooms at the center of their table. Apricot, not red, understated and intentional.
The candles weren’t scented. The playlist wasn’t obvious. There were no fairy lights. No rose petals or spectacle.
Just elegance, stripped down to its sharpest point. Gage’s kind of romance.
There was a half-finished glass of wine by her hand. Her plate had been cleared without her noticing. Somewhere behind her, a waiter moved like a ghost.
She should’ve been soaking in the atmosphere. The moment.
Instead, she’d been memorizing Gage. The way the soft amber light caught the line of his Adam’s apple. His fingers, long and elegant, curled around the wineglass. Fingernails, cut short and squared. A tiny freckle near his wrist that she sometimes brushed with her thumb when they held hands.
Her pulse was climbing as the minutes wore on.
Because she knew.
Not the exact second. Not the choreography. But the shape of the moment that had been forming for months.
London was happening.
He’d never asked if she wanted to go. Just whether she would.
And now he needed her answer as a promise.
“You know what I want for us.”
The moment was playing out, and Bea could feel it tilting, slipping, moving toward something inevitable.
He reached into his jacket.
Her heartbeat roared in her ears.
A velvet box appeared in his hand. He set it on the table.
Then, without a word, he flipped it open.
Bea forgot to breathe. The ring caught the candlelight, refracting through the flawless cut. Platinum. Elegant. Understated. A piece of permanence, designed to last.
Designed to hold the weight of a lifetime.
There was no speech. No carefully crafted declaration. The ring was the symbol.
A place beside him. A path already carved. All she had to do was reach for it.
Her hands gripped each other in her lap, even as her heart pulled forward and her mind screamed, Say yes.
She didn’t move.
Bea, you can still say yes. Say it now.
Before you lose him.
Gage was watching her with those too-blue eyes.
Something flickered. Like he’d accounted for this outcome. His fingers curled around the box. Not snapping it shut. Giving her one final chance to stop him.
Yes!
Her mind shrieked.
YES YES YES!
The words echoed so loudly inside her, she was sure he could hear them. Said with all the force of someone who still believed she could choose him.
Begging every part of her to move, to speak, to catch the moment before it fell.
But nothing happened. Her mouth didn’t open. Her knuckles were white.
And he understood.
Nodded once. And shut the box.
He slipped it back into his pocket.
“Gage—”
“I’ll take you home.”
I didn’t mean to ruin this.
But it was already too late. Because he knew she wasn’t going to say yes.
And Gage King never asked a question he didn’t already know the answer to.