47. Maxim #2
"I'm better with cargo manifests than jewelry sketches."
"It's terrible."
"I know."
"I love it."
I reached into the drawer beneath the chart and pulled out the small velvet box I'd been carrying around in one jacket pocket or another for over a month now, the same one Kirill had mocked me for three separate times in a jewelry shop, the same one that had been sitting open on my dresser the night everything came apart before I ever got the chance to ask the question it was made for.
"I bought this before I knew about the badge," I said.
"Before the drawer, before the gate, before any of it.
I've been carrying it around ever since, through a terminal firefight and a hospital and three weeks of you learning how to walk normally again, waiting for a version of tonight that actually deserved it. "
"Maxim."
"Let me finish. I've been rehearsing this since the jewelry shop and I'm still going to get it wrong."
I got down on one knee, half dressed, undignified, laughing despite myself at the sheer absurdity of proposing in nothing but half-buttoned trousers with a restored century-old chart as a backdrop, and opened the box.
"Marry me. For real this time."
"Yes!"
"I hadn't even finished the sentence."
"I didn't need you to." She was crying and laughing at once, both hands pressed to her mouth before she reached for me instead, pulling me up before I could even slide the ring onto her finger properly.
"Yes, Maxim. A thousand times yes, and you already knew that, which is why you drew a ring on a hundred-year-old chart instead of just asking like a normal person. "
"I've never once been a normal person."
"No. You really haven't." She kissed me, still laughing, still crying, both of us a wrecked, happy mess standing half dressed in front of a chart that had just become the most valuable thing either of us owned. "For the record, I'm keeping this. The chart, not just the ring."
"I was hoping you'd say that."
"You should hope. This is the same man who once let his crew almost kill me with a forklift."
"You spilled sixteen ounces of gas station coffee on a three thousand dollar suit within thirty seconds of meeting me. I think we're even."
"We are so far from even."
"Marry me and find out."
She laughed again, bright and unguarded, and slid the ring the rest of the way onto her finger herself, holding it up to the lamp like she needed to see it catch the light before she fully believed it was real.
"I can't believe we're doing this," she said. "I can't believe any of this happened. A forklift. A badge. A gate in the middle of the night. And somehow we ended up here."
"You forgot the sonogram in a paperback and the terminal firefight."
"I was trying to keep the list manageable."
"Fair enough. It's a long list."
"It's an insane list. Nobody would believe this if we told them straight through, start to finish. They'd assume we were exaggerating for effect."
"Kirill already thinks I exaggerate the forklift part."
"You do exaggerate the forklift part. You've added an entire additional near death experience to it every time you tell the story."
"I stand by all of them."
"Somehow." I pulled her back against my chest, both of us still laughing, both of us still catching our breath from an entirely different reason ten minutes earlier. "I'd do every single one of those days again if it ended here."
"Even the gate?"
"Especially the gate. I wouldn't know what I actually had until I stood there and lost it."
She went quiet at that, resting her head against my shoulder, the ring catching the lamp light every time she moved her hand even slightly, like she couldn't stop checking it was really there.
"So," she said finally. "Wedding."
"Apparently." I still couldn't quite believe the word applied to me.
"That's a real word now. A real thing that's actually happening. I keep waiting for someone to walk in and tell me it isn't."
"Nobody's walking in. I gave the whole floor the night off."
"You planned that far ahead?"
"I've been planning this for over a month. The chart just took longer to finish than the speech did."
"I have absolutely no idea where to even begin."
"Neither do I. I've run an empire for twelve years and I have never once planned anything smaller than a shipment or bigger than a funeral."
"That's deeply concerning."
"Kirill will have opinions."
"He'll have an entire seating chart drafted by morning."
"He usually does." I tipped her chin up, kissed her once more, slow and certain, the cold food and the wrecked bedsheets and the ridiculous ring sketch on a hundred-year-old chart all somehow adding up to the single best night of my entire life.
"We'll figure it out. We've figured out considerably harder things than a wedding. "
"That's true." She smiled against my mouth, still faintly disbelieving, still faintly laughing. "Ask me again tomorrow, when I'm not crying and half naked in your penthouse."
"I'll ask you every single day if that's what it takes."
"It might."
"Good. I was planning on it anyway."