Chapter 25 The Rock
The Rock
Aleks
When Paul calls and tells me he needs a ride from Rockefeller Center, I’m concerned and head that way, because it’s New Year’s Eve and the place has got to be a zoo. Before I could ask him, his phone cut out.
I have an hour before Sofie is supposed to be back here.
She’s preparing pink slips to thirteen people who are directly connected to the bitches, with her sister at the game, and a woman who has been there for years, one Sofie trusted, who the legacy group’s computer nerd is one hundred percent sure is the leak.
Terrie Marlowe, head of PR, the oldest branch of the company.
And she’s been an employee for twenty years, in February.
We’re heading to the Hen House tonight, dinner with everyone, including Marshall and his new girl, and Faulker, along with a few other people. But before that, dinner with Arthur, Matteo, and James.
When I get there, I’d have a hell of a time parking, but the officer from the other night sees me and moves a cone. “Gonna be gone by nine?” he asks.
“Just picking someone up, so yeah.”
“You’re good then.”
I slide into the spot, get out, and jog over to scan the area for him. I see Dash first.
“Hey, what’s up?” I ask.
“Paul called and needed a ride.” He shrugs.
“He called me for the same thing, but we disconnected, so maybe?” I say, looking around.
The same officer walks up, “I think what you’re looking for is down there.”
We both hurry over, assuming the worst, and lean over the side and see two girls on the ice, Sofie and Noelle, and Paul out there laughing his ass off, pushing a walker with boots on, James behind him.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dash laughs.
“Hey,” Sofie calls up to me. “Get down here.”
“I’m not sure I want to be seen with you on the ice,” I call back.
“Dude, harsh,” Dash laughs.
“I’m doing this for you, you better come down here, or you can take the guest room tonight,” she yells, fucking yells at me.
“Say please,” I taunt, because Sofie in brat mode is a massive turn on.
“Now!”
“You’re doing awesome, Noelle.” Dash gives her two thumbs up.
“Thank you for lying to me!” Noelle laughs. “I love you even more for it.”
“Ass kisser,” I grumble as I head down behind him.
When we get down there, skates our size await, and we both put them on and head out.
“You are good at so many things, the best at even more, but you’re —”
“Don’t touch me, my ass already hurts from how many times its hit the ice.”
I can’t help but laugh and skate backward, facing her, “You of all people choosing to do this in public?”
She waves her hand in the air, and I have to catch her, so she doesn’t fall again. She laughs, “This is a grand gesture.”
“Like in romance novels,” Noelle squeals as they fly past us, her hand in Dash’s hands.
“I don’t do grand gestures,” I remind her.
“You do them all the time.” She laughs.
“No, I do what I want, and sometimes I just want to see those green eyes light up, so I do a little more,” fuck it, I think as I stop and she crashes into me. I lift her up before she can scold me. “You don’t have to skate to make me happy.”
She smiles down at me, “You totally told me I needed to learn.”
“That was before,” I say as I turn in a circle.
“Before what?”
“Before I knew, I didn’t just want you on your knees,” I set her down and drop to mine. “Before I knew that I was the one who should be.”
“What are you,” she covers her mouth and gasps as I pull out a tiny blue box.
“Is this really happening!” Noelle squeals as they pass us again.
“I’m not a romantic man, but I am a man who will fulfill a promise, and I promise to love you always, Tsaritsa moya.
To cherish you forever. To protect you and all you love by whatever means necessary, if you say yes when I ask you to be my wife.
” I open the box and hold my breath as she looks at the ring.
“Oh-my-god-oh-my-god. Oh. My. God. Yes!”
I stand and take the ring from the box.
“No, I have mittens on, and if… when I fall, I don’t want to damage it.”
“Now who’s the romance killer?” I joke as I place it back in the box, then in my pocket, and hold out my hands. “Do you trust me, Tsaritsa moya?”
“With my life.” She says as she takes my hands.
And we skate.
As we pass Noelle and Dash, she is holding her phone out, and on the screen are Nalani and Claudia, both crying and laughing, just like my bride-to-be.
The New Year’s Eve party is now also an engagement party.
I didn’t plan it that way. I planned the ring.
I planned the question and the answer I already knew she’d give me.
I did not have a date set; I was just going to do it when it felt like the right time.
I also did not plan how her friends would descend like a coordinated unit the second the word “engaged “ left her mouth.
I stand there with Savannah, watching them surround Sofie as if she’s the center of gravity, all of them willingly caught in orbit. Good. That’s precisely where she belongs.
“He understood the assignment.” Noelle smiles.
Nalani leans in next, eyes sharp, reading the ring the way she reads plays on the ice.
“That’s a Tiffany solitaire,” she says. Not a question. “Platinum. Clean. Classy. No tricks. That’s about permanence.”
Claudia hangs back half a step, arms crossed loosely, a smile tugging at her mouth. She watches Sofie’s face more than the ring, which tells me everything I need to know about her. “He chose something that doesn’t compete with her. That’s… rare.”
Savannah squeals in my arms, and I whisper. “You have absolutely no sense of subtlety and no desire to acquire it. Never change that.”
Sofie laughs, a little overwhelmed, and instinctively leans back into me. I wrap an arm around her without thinking, my hand settling at her waist like it’s always lived there.
“It’s big, like someone would want to chop my finger off and steal it big,” Sofie says.
What the fuck?
She finally looks up at me then, eyes warm but assessing, “I love it so much.”
“And if someone wants it, you give it to them, because I love your fingers more.”
They all laugh, but I don’t.
Nalani straightens, satisfied. “That ring will still look amazing in fifty years. Timeless.”
“So will she,” I say before I can stop myself. “if she hands over the ring and doesn’t lose a finger to keep something that can be replaced.”
Sofie tips her head back to look at me, smiling in that way that still knocks the air out of my lungs even after everything. “I will fight for it.”
“Then you’ll be missing a finger, but have an excellent five-fingered outline of when my palm hits your ass.” I threaten, but it’s hollow, I’d never spank her ass… unless she asked.
“You went viral,” Faulker laughs. “Again.”
“What?” I ask as Sofie pulls my phone from my pocket and looks.
“Oh my God, who posted this?” She holds the screen up, and I watch the moment I asked her to be my wife, which three hundred thousand people have seen already, and it was just hours ago.
“So did we,” Deacon winks at Claudia.
“Which one?” Sofie asks as she scrolls and stops on a post that has several images, all from Deacon and Claudia’s wedding, the last of her and Sofie. “We came out?”
Claudia nods, “I’m not hiding that one of my sorority and sisters by choice ended up being my actual sister. It’s okay, right?”
Sofie hugs her, “Thank you.”
“And Sassy,” Paul calls over. “You had a kid who wanted to interview me, I told him no. You want that feel-good story, our story. Name the time and place.”
“Are you sure?” she asks, voice shaking.
“Damn right I am. Make sure it’s okay with Mr. Big Bucks.” He winks
She looks up at me, “Today wasn’t a good day.”
“No?” I ask.
“Today is the best day.”