7. Chapter Seven #2
I love him for it. I love him so freaking much.
Then he drops to one knee in front of me, which makes the dog walkers stop entirely. He reaches for his back pocket and retrieves a small blue velvet box.
I go quiet. Someone in the small crowd shouts something I don't grasp, because my brain has stopped functioning.
He opens the box.
There's a ring inside the box, and a loud ringing in my ear. I know that ring. I have seen it on Agatha Thornwood's hand a hundred times. An emerald the size of a quail's egg, set in platinum and gold.
Ancient. Expensive. Impossible.
"Madison Berwick," Demetrius speaks, his eyes bright with emotion. "Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"
I don't answer right away. My throat is closed shut so hard I can't even breathe.
"I've been thinking about this for months.
I don't want us to be separated while we go to college," he continues.
"You don't have to worry about college applications or scholarships or any of that.
Come to Boston with me. I'll take care of everything.
You'll never have to work a day in your life, Madison.
Not ever. Just stay with me and I'll take care of you. I'll take care of everything."
He says it like he's lifting a weight off my shoulders. Like he's giving me the world. And he is.
"You won't have to worry about money or a career." He searches my face. "I just want to take care of you. That's all I want to do."
And something cracks open in my chest, slow and painful, because I understand what this is. He loves me. He loves me completely and he has thought about exactly what that means, and in his mind, what it means is that he wants to take care of me by sheltering me from the world.
He doesn't understand that I want more in life than being pampered.
I close the box.
"Dem." My voice comes out quiet and low so that our spectators don't hear me. "I love you. You know I love you."
"Then say yes."
"I got a full scholarship to Duke. Their nursing program is incredible." I watch his face. "I've been working so hard for this. It's mine. I earned it."
Something shifts behind his eyes. "But you don't need it if you marry me."
"But I want it." I push the box back into his hands.
"I want you and I want to marry you someday, but I can't just not reach for my dream because you don't want us to be apart.
Yes, college will be hard, but we'll see each other over the holidays and for summers.
We can talk on the phone every day. We'll make it work, you'll see. "
"Maddie." He says my name like a question.
"I'm not saying no to you." My throat tightens. "I'm saying just not now."
He looks down at the box in his hands. When he looks back up, his face is already different.
I watch his face close like a door.
He gets to his feet. He puts the box in his jacket pocket. He looks at me for a long moment.
"Everything or nothing," he says. "I won't do this any other way."
"Are you saying that either I marry you before college or you're breaking up with me?"
He just stares at me and crosses his arms. There's something broken in his gaze and I want to reach out to him, but my entire body is frozen in place.
He can't be serious. But he is. He's giving me an ultimatum.
"I'm sorry." My voice breaks on the last syllable. "Don't do this, Dem."
He inhales deeply, like he's trying to take in enough oxygen all at once so he doesn't have to take another breath for the rest of his life.
"Goodbye, Madison."
Then he walks back down the pier and the ABBA song is still playing and people in the crowd are pointing at me. Then slowly, they move on, understanding that the show is over.
I sit there in the blue dress while the August light goes golden around me.
Dancing Queen. Of all the songs to break up to.
Jazz pulls me out of my memories by reaching across the table and pinching my forearm. Hard.
"Ouch!"
"But that was then, Maddie," Jazz says. "This is now."
"I know I should let it go." I've carried this pain so long the ache has gone numb, the way a bruise does when you've pressed it too many times. "I just wish we'd talked it out, back then. Get closure and all that. But it's too late now."
The mixer in the back kicks on and rattles.
Jazz is watching me with the expression that sits between "I love you" and "I'm very worried about you."
"He's not that boy anymore," she says.
"I know that."
"That's what I'm saying." She leans forward.
"The Demetrius Thornwood you were in love with doesn't exist anymore.
The man who hired you to take care of his grandmother is not the same boy who carried his heart on his sleeve for you back in high school.
He's a billionaire, used to using people and getting what he wants from them.
" She holds my gaze. "Men like that own things, Maddie. They own people, too."
The chair scrapes slightly under me as I shift.
"I'm not saying he's a bad person." Jazz picks up her coffee. "I'm saying I watched what it did to you when he left. And I don't want to watch that again. So do your job, cash your check and move on when this is over. Don't let your heart get run over by some asshole with a Rolls-Royce."
I open my mouth to tell her she's wrong. To tell her she's also right and that I don't even know myself anymore around him.
My phone rings. We both look at it on the table. Saved by the bell, I guess.
"Sorry," I say, and pick it up. "Hey, Dad."
"Maddie." His voice is different. I know every register my father has and this one is a version I haven't heard in a long time, somewhere between stunned and lit up from the inside. "You're not going to believe this."
I sit forward in my chair. "What happened?"
"The piers project." A pause, like he's still working out if it's real.
"It's back on, the funding came through and the mayor called me himself to ask if I could accelerate the timeline.
Not just back on, it's bigger, better. Full project, plus the north end extension that was shelved thirty years ago.
The Thornwood family made a donation to honor the memory of Cornelius Thornwood.
I'm calling the boys back to work tomorrow.
" His voice does something that makes my throat tighten. "We're saved."
I laugh before I can stop it, the real kind, nothing performative in it.
"Dad, this is really great." It's all I say. My throat is already tightening.
"I gotta go now." He clears his throat and I have a suspicion that his eyes aren't exactly dry right now. "I just wanted you to know."
"Go on then." I have to clear my throat to keep talking. "Tell your crew I said hi."
He laughs and hangs up.
I put the phone down.
Jazz is watching me across the table with a question mark on her forehead.
"The piers project came through," I say. "Dad has his contract back."
Jazz reaches across the table and squeezes my hand, once, short and firm.
"This is amazing news," she says, her face breaking into a wide grin.
I check the time and push back from the table.
"I have to get Agatha from the library," I say.
Jazz stands with me. She walks me to the door and hands me the last croissant in a small paper bag, because she's Jazz and she likes to stuff me with food that I regret later. Well, that's a lie. Who in their right mind could regret Jazz's baking? Not this gal.
"Just be careful with your heart," she says, at the door.
"I'll try."
She hugs me, quick and solid, then holds the door while I go.
The afternoon has gone gold while I was inside, the light going sideways through the oaks on Main Street and making everything look briefly, unreasonably beautiful.
I walk to the Rolls and climb up into it, which is not particularly graceful, and I sit in the driver's seat. I pull out of the parking spot and point the car toward the library.
And I try not to wonder if I'll see Demetrius tonight in the kitchen.