Chapter 20 Sloane
Sloane
Something was different about Garrett today.
I noticed it the moment he walked into the kitchen. Shoulders set just a little too straight. Smile coming half a second too late. He kissed my cheek the same way he did every morning, handed me coffee the same way he had since I'd moved in.
But something underneath was humming. Electric. Barely contained.
"Sleep okay?" I asked, watching him over the rim of my mug.
"Fine. Great." He checked his phone. Pocketed it. Checked it again. "You?"
"Garrett."
"What?"
"You've looked at your phone four times in the last minute."
"I'm waiting for a text from Shane. Shift coverage thing." He was a terrible liar. Always had been. Couldn't quite meet my eyes. Hand going to the back of his neck. Suddenly finding the coffee maker fascinating.
I decided to let him have it. Whatever he was planning, I'd find out soon enough.
"Okay," I said. "Shift coverage thing."
He relaxed slightly. "I was thinking we could take a walk later. This evening. It's supposed to be nice out."
"A walk."
"Yeah. Maybe the bridge? We haven't been there in a while."
The Brooklyn Bridge. Where he'd kissed me for the first time. Where I'd told him I loved him and meant it in a way I'd never meant anything before.
My heart did something complicated in my chest.
Could it be—?
No. Too soon. We'd only been living together a few weeks.
But it had also been ten years.
But it had also been ten years. Ten years of loving him, even when I couldn't admit it. Even when I was in DC, then back in New York, then dating other people who were never quite right because they weren't him.
"The bridge sounds nice," I said carefully.
Garrett's smile was bright. Too bright.
"Then I'll pick you up from home." He kissed me again, longer this time, lingering, and grabbed his keys. "I've got to head in early. Shane needs help with something."
"Shift coverage?"
"Right. That."
The door clicked shut behind him.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was just a walk and a sunset.
But I'd been a journalist for years. I knew when something was happening.
He picked me up at six.
I'd changed three times before settling on a simple dress. Nothing too fancy. Nothing that screamed I know what you're planning. But I'd put on the earrings he'd given me. Curled my hair. Spent longer on my makeup than I had in months.
Just in case.
Garrett's breath caught when he saw me. That was the only tell I needed.
"You look beautiful," he said.
"It's just a walk."
"Yeah." His voice was rough. "Just a walk."
We took the subway to the bridge. The city was golden in the evening light. The air warm but not heavy, carrying the smell of street food and something sweeter underneath.
We walked in comfortable silence. His palm was sweaty. I pretended not to notice.
The bridge stretched out before us. Cables rising toward a sky blushing pink and orange. Tourists with cameras. Joggers in neon sneakers. A man playing violin near the first tower, something classical and melancholic that made my throat tight for reasons I couldn't name.
Garrett led me to a spot near the center of the bridge. The same spot, I realized. The exact same spot where he'd pulled me close ten years ago and kissed me for the first time.
"Garrett—"
He turned to face me.
Sunset behind him, painting him in gold and amber. Gray-blue eyes bright. Wet, almost. Jaw set the way it got when he was trying to hold himself together.
"Years ago, I proposed because I couldn't wait another second to ask you to be my wife."
My heart stopped.
"I was twenty-six. I thought I knew what love meant. I thought wanting you was enough. That if I loved you hard enough, nothing could ever go wrong."
"Garrett—"
"I was wrong." His voice broke on the word.
"I didn't know what losing you would feel like.
What it would do to me. Eight years of trying to move on.
Trying to build a life that made sense without you in it.
" He swallowed. "I didn't know what it would feel like to get you back and almost lose you again. "
He reached into his pocket. Pulled out a small velvet box.
"I know now what forever actually costs. What it takes. What you have to be willing to give." He opened the box.
"So I'm asking again. Not because I can't wait. Because I don't want to waste another minute of the rest of our lives."
The ring was beautiful. Three stones set in a delicate band. The center diamond, I recognized it. The same modest stone he'd given me eight years ago.
But now it was flanked by two smaller diamonds, the whole thing transformed into something new.
"The diamond in the center is the same one I gave you the first time. I wanted to keep it. Because that's part of our story too." His voice cracked. "The years we had. The years we lost. The years we're going to have together."
He held my gaze.
"Forever, Sloane. That's what I'm asking for."
I was crying.
Of course I was crying. The tears were streaming down my face before I even registered them, blurring the sunset into gold and pink.
"Yes." The word came out broken. Raw. "Yes. Yes, yes, yes."
He slid the ring onto my finger. It fit perfectly.
Then he was kissing me, and I was kissing him back, and the whole city was spread out below us but none of it mattered.
Just his hands on my face. His mouth on mine. Salt from my tears and the warmth of him. Solid and real and mine.
"I love you," he said against my lips.
"I love you too." I laughed through my tears. "I never stopped. Not for one day."
"Neither did I."
We stood there on the bridge, holding each other. The ring glinting on my finger in the fading light. Somewhere behind us, someone cheered. The violin player shifted into something bright and celebratory.
Eight years of waiting.
Finally over.
We barely made it through the apartment door.
His mouth was on my neck before I got my keys out of the lock, his hands sliding under my jacket, pulling me closer. I turned in his arms and kissed him properly. Deep. Desperate. All the wanting I'd been holding back finally given permission.
"Garrett—"
"I know." He walked me backward toward the bedroom, his lips never leaving mine. "I know."
We'd been together for months. Intimate. Learning each other again.
But this was different. This was after. After the ring. After the yes. After the promise of forever that changed everything.
He backed me against the bedroom door before we even got it open. His mouth found mine, and I laughed against his lips, this breathless, ridiculous sound I barely recognized.
"The ring." Between kisses. "I'm going to lose the ring."
"You're not going to lose the ring." He reached behind me, turned the doorknob. We stumbled through together.
He caught my left hand. Brought it to his mouth. Kissed the ring, then my knuckle, then my wrist where my pulse was hammering.
"It's not going anywhere," he said. "Neither am I."
Something about the way he said it, low, certain, like a vow before the vows, flipped a switch in my chest. I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled.
I yanked his shirt over his head. He unzipped my dress in one smooth motion, he'd been thinking about that zipper all evening. It pooled at my feet, and he stepped back just enough to look at me.
"You planned this." His gaze tracking down my body. "This is not just-a-walk underwear."
"I'm an investigative journalist. I investigate."
His laugh was low and warm, and then his hands were on me, and the laughter turned into something else. Something that started in my stomach and spread outward like a lit match.
We fell onto the bed without grace. Elbows and knees and his shin catching the bedframe. I pulled him closer instead of letting him apologize, wrapping my legs around him.
The solid weight of him settling against me.
"Hi," I whispered.
"Hi." He brushed the hair from my face. Grinned down at me, that rare, unguarded grin that cracked his whole serious face wide open. "Fiancée."
The word sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with the air on my skin.
"Say it again."
"Fiancée." He kissed my jaw. "Fiancée." My collarbone. "Fiancée." Lower.
I arched into him. My fingers raked through his hair, and the sound he made against my skin— low, rough, undone—dissolved whatever was left of my composure.
No careful choreography. No slow mapping of territory. We knew each other's geography by now, the shortcuts and the scenic routes, and tonight we took both.
Fast when the want overtook us. Slow when one of us wanted to savor.
His mouth finding the spot below my ear that made my breath hitch. My teeth grazing his shoulder where the scar was, the place I'd learned made him grip the sheets.
At one point I started laughing again and he lifted his head.
"You're laughing."
"I'm happy."
Something shifted in his face. Softened.
"Yeah." Rough. Quiet. "Me too."
Then his hips moved, and the laughter caught in my throat and became something else entirely.
We lay there in the dark. My back against his chest. His arm heavy across my waist.
I lifted my left hand. The ring catching moonlight through the window. Three stones.
Still there. Still real.
"I can't believe you kept this a secret. You're the worst liar I've ever met."
"I had help. Brian came with me to the jeweler."
"Brian?"
"He knew a place in Astoria. Same woman who upgraded his ring for Ava." Garrett grinned against my hair. "She's the one who suggested the three stones. Said every ring has a story, and ours deserved to be told."
"Remind me to thank her."
"You can. She wants us to come back after we're married. She likes to see her rings on the people they belong to."
I pressed a kiss to his chest. "I like the sound of that."
"The ring?"
"Being married to you."
He pulled me closer. Kissed the top of my head.
"Soon. I don't want to wait."
"Neither do I."
Six months later, we got married at the firehouse.
Where else?