Chapter 21
RANSOM
Christmas Eve
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t having flashbacks.
As I pick up the velvet box, weigh it in my hand, then slide it into my pocket, I remember the last time I did this.
There are moments when I think I must be insane to try it again.
But as soon as those thoughts land in my head, I brush them away. I’m not interested in the old mottos anymore. I don’t cling to them for safety.
And I don’t want them to trip me up.
If I’m insane, it’s a good kind of crazy.
When I go to Teagan’s home that night to spend Christmas Eve together, I stay in the moment.
And the moment includes kissing her, drinking hot chocolate, and listening to cheesy holiday music as snow falls outside her picturesque reading nook window.
Then it’s time for stockings, and I tell her to grab the one I hung for her.
When she dips her hand inside and pulls out the box, she shoots me a curious look—a rather intrigued one.
My heart pounds against my ribs, thumping out a potent rhythm of hope.
Of second chances.
And most of all, of yeses.
“Ransom,” she says, her voice choked with emotion.
And in a flash, I move in front of her and get down on one knee.
Hope floods me.
Nerves fill me.
And love guides me.
“Teagan King, the last six months with you have been wildly fun, incredibly sexy, intensely romantic, and filled with so much love that each day I wonder how it’s possible to feel so much.
But it must be, because it’s happening.” I stop to take a breath—there’s so much more to say.
“I want to spend all my days with you. I’m in love with you, and I love you, and I want to sing ‘Summer Nights’ with you and down chocolate milkshakes together and go out with our friends and play laser tag and stay in bed and curl up with each other. With you, only you, always you.”
She brings her hand to her mouth, gasping as she nods vigorously and keeps nodding like she can’t stop.
Like she’s as thrilled, delighted, and absolutely happy as I am.
“I would love to marry you,” she says, and I take the box and open it, then slide a diamond solitaire onto her ring finger, gazing at it and loving the way it looks on my fiancée.
This time, this love will last.
All the walls have come down. I’ve pushed past all my fears. And I’m stepping into a new future with the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.
Two months later, we’re in Cancun, happy as clams, ready for Logan to marry Bryn, knowing we’ll be the next in our group to say our I dos. Yeah, all my single soldiers have fallen.
Fallen happily into their forevers.