44. Chapter 44 #2
The ocean crashes quietly below us while I watch him swallow hard, his hazel eyes reflecting fractured moonlight.
“I know I’m not the same person I used to be,” he admits quietly. “Sometimes I feel it in everything. The way I think, react to things, and even in the way I love you.” A weak laugh leaves him. “I think I love you even worse now somehow.”
I smile through the sudden sting gathering behind my eyes. “Worse?”
“More intensely,” he corrects softly. “Like if something happened to you again, I’d lose my fucking mind.”
Emotion tightens visibly in his throat before he continues.
“And you’ve changed too,” he says gently, reaching up to brush strands of dark hair behind my ear.
“You’re stronger now. Calmer in some ways, and sadder in others.
” His fingers linger against my cheekbone.
“But Emma…I swear to god, I’ve never loved you more than I do right now.
And I…I have to say I really enjoy the version of you that openly says, 'fuck. '”
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying.
He exhales shakily before continuing, quieter now.
“I think we’re always going to carry parts of this with us.
Maybe there’ll always be nightmares. Maybe there’ll always be scars.
” His gaze searches mine desperately. “But I will spend the rest of my life loving every version of you that exists after this. Every future part I haven’t even met yet. ”
A tear slips down my cheek.
Jude’s expression breaks the moment he sees it. “I’ll protect you until my last breath,” he whispers fiercely. “I’ll love you until the end of my fucking days, Emma. Nothing that happened to us will ever change that.”
My heart feels too large for my chest.
And then his hand slips carefully into the pocket of his hoodie. For a moment, my brain doesn’t even process what’s happening. Not until I see the small black velvet box in his hands.
My breath catches embarrassingly loud.
Jude lets out a nervous laugh. “Okay, now I’m terrified.”
I stare at him in complete shock while the ocean wind whips softly through both of our hair. “You’re joking,” I whisper.
“No.” His voice cracks slightly. “No, baby. I’m serious.” He shifts beneath me carefully.
My jaw drops as I stare at that little box.
“I had this whole speech planned,” he says with another breathless laugh, rubbing nervously at the back of his neck. “But now I’m looking at you and I can barely fucking think.”
I’m crying openly now.
Jude opens the ring box with trembling fingers.
And inside it rests the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen.
Delicate gold branches wrap around the band like twisting pieces of nature, cradling a large, pale oval diamond that catches moonlight like captured starlight.
Tiny dark stones are embedded along the sides like fragments of the night sky itself.
It almost reminds me of the night we first met.
It looks ethereal and precious and wild.
Like us.
“I had this made for you,” Jude says softly. “I stared up at the night sky so many times when I was in a bad place. I’d think of you, and how you were out there somewhere, existing beneath the same moon. The same sky.”
I laugh through tears, wiping them frantically from my cheeks.
His own eyes are glassy now too as he looks up at me.
“You saved my life long before Moscow,” he whispers. “You loved me when I hated myself. You stayed when I gave you every reason not to.” His voice shakes harder now. “The memory of how it felt to love you…it kept me here.”
I swallow hard, pain flickering through his expression and my own.
“And even after seeing the worst parts of me,” he continues. “The ugliest fucking parts…you still look at me like I’m worth loving.”
“You are,” I choke out immediately.
Emotion wrecks him completely for a second. Then he smiles. “Emma Easton,” he says softly, “will you marry me and let me love you for the rest of our lives?”
For a moment, I can only stare at him.
Memory after memory floods through me so quickly that I can barely separate one from the next.
The first time he told me he loved me. The nights we spent tangled together talking about the future as if it was just guaranteed.
The devastation of watching everything fall apart.
The unbearable grief of losing him. The endless wondering. The endless searching.
The desperate hope that refused to die even when every logical part of me begged it to.
I remember Moscow, blood, and real fear. I remember hospital lights and the sound of Jude’s voice breaking as he begged me to wake up, as though sheer force of will could keep me from slipping away from him forever.
And through all of it, through every heartbreak and every goodbye and every impossible thing that tried to destroy us, there was always this invisible thread stretching between us, pulling us back toward one another no matter how far apart we drifted.
We should have lost this.
There were a hundred moments when our story should have ended. A hundred opportunities for tragedy to win. Somewhere between addiction and violence and grief and years spent believing we’d never find our way back to each other, we should have become nothing more than a beautiful, terrible memory.
But we didn’t.
Somehow, against every odd stacked against us, he survived what would have been impossible for most people. A sob catches in my throat, because for the first time in years, the future doesn’t feel fragile or like it could disappear. It feels real.
I can suddenly see it so clearly that it almost hurts.
Mornings beside him in a home filled with laughter.
Growing older together until the dark hair I love so much turns silver.
Decades of ordinary moments that once felt completely impossible, now stretching out before us.
For so long, all I’ve wanted was more time.
One more day. One more hour. One more message. One more chance.
And now he’s offering me the rest of his life.
My vision blurs with tears as I look back at him, at the man I almost lost, at the person who has owned every piece of my heart for years. My home, my future, the absolute love of my life. And suddenly, saying yes feels as natural as breathing.
“Yes,” I sob out. “Yes, Jude. Of course.”
The relieved sound that leaves him sounds like a laugh and a sob. He slips the ring onto my shaking hand before pulling me into him. Then he kisses me, desperately and deeply.
I melt into it, fingers tangling into his hair while his arms wrap tightly around my waist beneath the stars.
The ring glitters against his shoulder when I touch him, and the reality of it sends another wave of emotion crashing through me.
He carefully lowers me backward onto the dock, hovering over me beneath endless moonlight while the ocean roars softly around us.
His lips lovingly move over mine, and I’m already digging my nails into his back, nipping at his bottom lip. “Do you want to go inside?” he asks, pausing everything. I grin up at him. “No. Here’s perfect right now.”
He kisses me again, smiling against my lips. My dress rides up my thighs, and he pulls my underwear to the side. His fingers find me already ready for him, and the noise he makes sends a tremor through me. Two fingers sink inside me, and my back bows off the dock planks.
His eyes are hazel pools in the moonlight. The intimacy of being watched while his fingers are inside me is almost unbearable. It’s too much and not enough, making my heart race and my throat close and my hips shift upward seeking more.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. His fingers curl at the end of each stroke, a territory he mapped years ago and never forgot. “Let me hear you.”
I’m beyond words now, whimpering against his mouth.
“You have no idea.” His lips brush my ear. “No idea how many nights I thought about this. About you. About the way you—” His voice breaks on the last word as my inner muscles clench around his fingers.
“Jude.” His name tears out of me. “Please.”
“Please, what?”
“More. I need—” My hips roll against his hand, frantic now, chasing something that’s building.
“Yeah?”
I’m nodding, gasping, my fingers tangled in his hair and my thighs trembling around his wrist. The pressure builds, a thousand points of sensation all pulling toward the same inevitable center.
His name falls from my lips, over and over.
His fingers never stop, never falter, driving me higher until—
I shatter. The orgasm rolls through me in pulses, each one more intense than the last. My body arches off the dock, and I hear myself cry out. He works me through it, fingers gentling as I come down, and when I finally open my eyes, he’s watching me with a smirk.
“Good girl,” he breathes.
Before I can respond, he lifts his hand from between my thighs, bringing his fingers to his mouth. His lips part. His tongue traces the length of his ring finger, then his middle.
I surge upward and kiss him. My hands fumble between us, finding his belt, the button of his pants, the zipper. He helps me push the fabric down his hips.
His forehead drops to my shoulder as he thrusts inside me with a groan. My legs wrap around his waist, ankles crossing at the small of his back, and he sinks deeper. The pace he sets is slow and deliberate, and words abandon us both while he makes love to me on this dock where it all started.
Where we met. Where we fell in love. Got engaged.
We finally got our second chance at a happy ending, and we’re not letting it slip away this time.
I stare at the sky for a moment over his shoulder, admiring the moon and the stars, forcing this memory to stick.
I never want to forget this night for as long as I live.
My arms tighten around him, feeling every movement, listening to every sound.
I’m so present in this that it makes me nearly overflow with joy.
Our eyes meet. The world narrows to his gaze, the moonlight on his cheekbones, the strand of dark hair dangling across his forehead. He’s beautiful. He’s mine. He’s here, inside me, and nothing has ever felt more right.
A broken sound leaves him before his mouth crashes onto mine.
The kiss swallows his groan as his body locks, muscles seizing.
He keeps kissing me through it. Keeps moving, drawing out every last spasm until we collapse together on the dock, tangled and trembling and utterly spent.
For a long moment, there is only breathing.
He lifts his head, kissing my cheek. “You’re my life, Emma.”
I cup his face in my hands. “You’re mine.” My eyes water, remembering how terrified he looked when I got shot. I remember how his voice was the last thing I heard before going under.
Jude Graves is my soulmate in every sense of the word. And I’m his.