Cassie #2
“You know, I had a whole plan for tonight,” he confesses, and it’s then that I notice his hands trembling, his breath a little shaky.
“Semi-formal has always held such significance for us. I almost fought Clay at your first one, nearly killed Grayson after he broke your heart at the second one, and came pretty close to losing you forever last year, thanks to my pride. We don’t have the best track record when it comes to them, so I was really hoping to set that straight tonight. ”
“Well, I beat you to the punch,” I tease. “I just… I couldn’t go. I couldn’t get dressed up and dance and pretend I’m okay.”
“I was flying in for your graduation, too,” he adds. “Which is in three days. So we need to get you back home.”
I nod.
Adam sighs, still thumbing my jaw.
I frown, covering his shaking knuckle with my hand. “Are you okay?”
“About to shit myself, actually, thanks for asking.”
I laugh, searching his eyes, confused. “What? Why are you—ohmygod.”
My hands fly over my mouth, eyes bulging out of my head as Adam carefully lowers down onto one knee.
Distantly, I hear the collective gasp around us, traveling strangers as shocked as I am as they pull out their cell phones and watch Adam dig into his jacket pocket.
“Like I said,” he starts, freeing the box.
“I had a whole plan for this. But I guess if we’ve learned anything by now, it’s that plans don’t ever work out the way we think they will.
Not for us. The world loves to throw us curveballs, to test us, to throw every hurdle at us it can just to see if we’ll break.
” He smiles then. “But we don’t. We won’t.
We never could. Because you and me, Cassie?
We’re indestructible.” A pause. “Just like diamond.”
He pops the lid open, a chorus of squeals and swoons echoing all around us. Nestled inside the cream cushion is a delicate gold band with a solitaire round diamond glimmering in the light.
“Adam,” I whisper, shaking my head, eyes flicking from the ring to him and back again.
“No more games, Cassie McBee. No more letting other people get in the way, or cursing bad timing, or letting miles stretch between us. I want you — all of you — from this very moment until my last full breath. I want to follow you to Baltimore and then to wherever you may go next. I want to be the only man who has the pleasure of cuddling you in your sweatpants and feeding you mint chocolate chip ice cream,” he says, and another round of laughters and awww’s reverberate around us.
“I want to wipe away your tears, even if I cause them. I want to be the first one to call you doctor when you get that white coat — and I know you will. But more than anything else,” he breathes, taking the ring from the box and holding it in his shaking fingertips.
“I want you to know with every beat of your heart that I am yours, that you are everything to me, and that we can face anything this crazy universe throws at us. Together.”
He reaches for my hand then — my left hand — and I tremble as he takes me in his grasp.
“Marry me, Cassie,” he says, his green eyes shining where they look up at me. “Marry me, and I promise, I will spend all my life infuriating you.”
A laugh rips from my chest, but tears invade my vision all the same as I nod, vigorously and relentlessly. “Yes,” I whisper for good measure.
And he slips the ring on my finger.
The crowd at the gate cheers, whistles and claps and hoots and hollers ringing in our ears as Adam rushes to his feet and pulls me into his arms. I kiss him in a way that is far from airport appropriate, but I don’t care.
No one else exists to me in this moment.
It’s just me and Adam floating on a cloud, his promise weighing down my finger, his love forever in my heart.
“Thank God you said yes,” he breathes into my ear for just me to hear. “It would have been really embarrassing if you’d said no.”
I laugh. “You knew my answer before you even thought to ask.”
“You’ve been known to surprise me.”
“That’s true,” I concede. When we pull back, I hold my hand up between us, moving my finger at the shiny, unfamiliar ring now occupying it. “Wow,” I breathe.
“Do you like it?”
“I would have said yes to an onion ring.”
He laughs, but I can’t take my eyes off the rock.
“Damn, that would have been a lot more affordable. Why don’t we return this one and just hit Burger King on the—”
I press my finger to his lips to shush him, and then kiss him to silence him even more, allowing him nothing but a satisfied chuckle against my mouth.
“Alright, before I lose myself completely and check us into the nearest airport hotel, we need to go beg that flight attendant to give us another ticket for this flight.”
I frown. “Wait, we’re still going?”
“Are you kidding? It’s your last semi-formal. Besides,” he says, kissing my hand. “We’ve got to get you graduated.”
Graduated.
I’ve been so lost in my heartache that I haven’t had time to let it sink in, that this is it, this is the end.
My time at Palm South University is almost up.
Adam collects my bag and then his, shrugging the duffle over his shoulder as he wheels mine behind him. Then, his blazing eyes find mine, and he crooks a smile.
“Ready?”
There he is. My fiancé. My future husband. The man who owns me, body and soul.
I slip my arm around his, the diamond on my finger catching the light. And I know that no matter what happens next, life will be the biggest adventure with him by my side.
“Ready.”