Chapter 38 #2
Finn swallows hard. "I've spent my whole life jumping out of things.
" His voice falters for a second but he doesn't stop.
I have watched him command every room he's ever walked into since the time he was a boy, and now he's kneeling on a pub floor coming apart over me.
"I'm ready to jump now too. With you, if you'll have me.
Only with you. Let me be your safe landing, the way you're mine. Marry me, Darcy."
He takes my left hand in his, waiting for my answer. The girl who used to make herself small in rooms like this is somewhere in me still, and I feel her watching now. She's waiting too. I inhale slowly, and I feel her let go.
"Yes," I say, nodding at Finn. It comes out as a whisper, so I say it again—louder, for the people in the back—because he is not the only one who knows how to work this room. "Yes!"
For half a second before the room erupts, I get to watch my answer land on him. The breath going out of him. The grin arriving, the real one, the one he saves just for me.
He lets out a whoop. "She said yes, everybody!"
The pub detonates.
Finn surges up off his knee and suddenly I'm in the air—actually in the air—his arms around my waist and my feet off the floor and my laugh lost somewhere in his shoulder.
He sets me down only long enough to put the ring on my finger and now both of us are shaking.
It takes the two of us together to manage it, and the whole town laughs along with us while we do.
The ring fits perfectly. Of course it fits. Annie developed a sudden fascination with my ring size on Tuesday, which at the time I chalked up to Annie being Annie. Now I know. He's been working for days to make this moment as perfect as he could for me.
"I love you," I tell him, throwing my arms around his neck.
He says it back, kissing me around the words.
Then he sweeps me off my feet again and spins us around as he continues kissing me like he never wants to stop.
The cheering gets louder. I hear glasses clinking somewhere and Annie shrieking, and what I am fairly certain is Ernie Howard whistling through his fingers like it's a touchdown.
My mother reaches us first. Finn sets me down, not taking his arm from around my waist.
"Clara," he says, smiling in some secret language with her. "You were right. She did say yes."
My mom beams at him, then at me. She takes my face in both hands, and my mother, who learned exactly what this town's attention could cost the same year I did, starts crying in front of all of them. This time, it's the good kind of tears.
"He asked me for my blessing," she manages. "Two days ago. On the phone from Colorado. He asked my permission to propose to you."
He asked her permission. Of course he did. He can't possibly know how much that means to her, or to me. Then again, he probably does. The fact that he took the extra step to include my mom is a kindness I could only expect from Finn.
My Finn.
Soon to be my husband.
"I love you, Mom," I say, and then the two of us are holding on and laughing and crying all over again, and neither of us minds one bit.
Jane is next, wrapping me into a big hug without a word, holding on like I'm already part of her family. "Finally," she whispers into my hair, which says more than an entire speech could convey. "I'm so happy for you both."
"Maid of honor," Annie announces, loudly and to the general assembly, one hand raised as she approaches us. "I'm calling it now, in front of witnesses. It's legally binding."
I laugh and give her a thumbs-up. "There's no one else I'd rather have standing next to me as I marry Finn. After all, if not for you, none of this would have been possible in the first place."
"I beg your pardon?" Evan hobbles up to us on his crutches, his crooked smile full of self-satisfaction. "If not for me risking life and limb on that loft ladder, none of this would've been possible. I want that in a toast. Possibly on the invitations."
Finn and I laugh. Annie giggles, earning a wink from Evan.
"You fell on your ass," Colton says, sardonic as ever. "The only thing you contributed was clumsiness."
Evan shrugs. "Semantics."
Past Annie and Evan's obvious flirting I watch Colton fold Finn into the kind of handshake that turns into a hug halfway through, the two of them thumping each other's backs hard enough to bruise.
I don't hear what's said between the brothers, but the soft look on Finn's face makes me give Colton a knowing, grateful smile before he slips back into the crowd.
Finn pulls me into him as soon as his arms are free again, gathering my back against his chest, his arms crossed over me like a seatbelt.
For a minute we just stand there in the middle of it all.
The whole loud, nosy, impossible town, every face I've spent my life reading, all of them turned toward us and shining.
His mouth finds my ear.
"Wait until you see what I've got planned for the wedding night," he murmurs, low enough that it's mine alone, and heat drops straight down through the center of me.
"Why wait?" I murmur back, and feel him go briefly, powerfully still. He's already hard for me, and I love that I am the woman who gets to do that to him. Forever, now.
His ring is a new small weight on my left hand.
Heavy in the best possible way. I look around the room at everything I was always so careful not to want too loudly.
My mother laughing. My best friends planning.
My people, my town… my man. And I decide, right here in the middle of everyone, that I am through being careful about joy.
Then I grab my fiancé by the collar and kiss him again, in front of God, my mother, and the entire town.
And he kisses me back.