Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
LIANA
My flower shop goes dead silent.
I could swear the alphas could probably hear my heart beating audibly as I watch Ezra on one knee, looking at me so intensely. He is just looking up at me. I am just looking down at him. My brain has stopped working entirely.
There is a single pale petal stuck to the cuff of his charcoal jacket, from a flower bucket he must have brushed against on his way in, and it is the most human thing I have ever seen on him.
His gray eyes are wet as he takes a small breath, keeping his eyes on my face the entire time.
“I was wrong,” he says quietly. “I came to your shop to buy you out without caring.” He pauses.
“I was a cold man before you came into my life. I did not even know I was cold until you walked into that café and something in my chest softened.” His jaw tightens, then releases.
“I love you. I will give my life protecting you. My brothers and I want to spend the rest of ours proving that we are for you.”
My throat closes. My eyes spill over before I can stop them. He’s proposing to me. Like really proposing.
Julian steps forward next, clearing his throat, and looking serious for once. “I’m more in love with you than I have ever been in my life,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to do this since the carnival. I knew, even then, that I was never going to get over you.”
Cole steps up beside him. He doesn’t say anything at first. He just looks at me until my face goes hot.
“You didn’t deserve those scars,” he says finally.
Low. Rough. “Not one of them. I am going to spend the rest of my life making sure nobody ever hurts you again.” His slate-blue eyes are bright, wet, and it undoes me more than anything else because Cole doesn’t cry or become emotional.
“I love you. All of you. Every bit of you.”
Tears are pouring now. I can’t stop them.
August comes last. His eyes are bright behind his glasses, but he’s holding it together, barely.
“I’m happiest when you’re around,” he says softly. “You looked more beautiful in my library than you’ve ever looked anywhere else, and I am going to find every excuse in the world to keep you there. I love you, Lia.”
I let out a small wet giggle despite myself, and he smiles, that boyish, open smile.
The shop has gone very quiet. I have both hands pressed against my mouth, and I cannot speak.
Ezra reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulls out a small black velvet box, and opens it slowly.
The ring inside is the one I have already seen, half-hidden under a bed I was never supposed to find it under.
The band is hand-engraved, a fine pattern of vines and small leaves curling around the peridot stone, pale green with gold flecks.
It is the most beautiful object I have ever seen in my life.
Ezra holds it up to me. His voice goes soft.
“I want you to be my wife,” he says, looking up at me steadily. “My brothers want you to be their wife.”
I cannot breathe.
Into the silence, very clearly, very politely, Pepper says, “Bedtime.”
The four brothers freeze.
Julian closes his eyes. Cole sighs through his nose. August snorts before he can stop himself, and the sound breaks something loose in my chest.
I am still crying. I look at each of them, and my chest feels too full for my ribs. “Yes, I accept your proposal. I love you. All four of you.”
Ezra’s face breaks into a wide smile as he slides the ring onto my finger. It fits. Of course it fits. The peridot catches the late afternoon light slanting through the front window and throws a small green-gold reflection onto my wrist.
He stands and takes my face in both hands. He kisses me slow and deep, and I kiss him back through my tears. When he pulls away, he presses his forehead to mine and breathes me in, eyes closed.
Then Julian is there, cupping my jaw, kissing me with a grin I can feel against my mouth. “My beautiful florist fiancé,” he whispers, and I laugh into the kiss.
Cole is next. He brings both hands to the sides of my face and kisses me hard. “I don’t want to be apart from you for another day. Not ever, sweetheart.”
“Me either,” I whisper, placing a hand on his strong chest. “I want to be with you forever going forward.”
August kisses me gently and with love. “I don’t want to be alone again, Lia.”
“I won’t leave you ever again,” I reply, smiling as he wipes my tears with his thumb.
The bell over the door rings.
Mira shoves it open and freezes on the threshold. Her mouth falls open. She looks at the alphas in suits standing around me. She looks at my tear-streaked face.
She does not move.
Laughing now through fresh tears, I lift my hand and hold it up for her to see. The peridot catches the light.
“Oh my god!” Mira screams. “You’re engaged!”
She drops the small paper bag she’d been carrying and bolts across the shop and tackles me into a hug. She is sobbing happy congratulations into my shoulder.
“Thank you,” I say, laughing and giggling like we’re totally alone.
She pulls back, holds me by the shoulders, looks me in the eyes, sees whatever she needs to see there, and hugs me again, hard, kissing my cheek.
“I’ll be back another time when we can talk about everything,” she whispers, her eyes sparkling. She looks towards my new pack. “I expect detailed individual reports.”
Ezra inclines his head with the gravity of a man accepting terms of surrender. Mira beams, backs out of the shop, and the bell rings again as the door swings shut behind her. We can hear her shrieking joyfully somewhere down the block.
Cole makes a small approving sound and reaches behind the sales counter, producing a chilled bottle of champagne. He uncorks it neatly. The cork pops toward the ceiling. Julian whoops.
Cole produces four champagne flutes from a small wooden box by the door. He hands one to each of us. Ezra pours. August kisses my temple. Pepper, still on Cole’s shoulder, demands to be let out.
We sit on the floor of the shop. The brothers in their suits. Me, cross-legged in the middle of them. We drink champagne and eat takeout from a bag Cole had apparently brought in from the car.
I keep looking down at my left hand. The ring catches the light every time I move.
I cannot stop looking at it. I had not been ready for this an hour ago. I am not entirely sure I am ready for it now. But I am wearing it, and every time I look at it, my chest fills with warmth.
Around eight, after the takeout is gone and the bottle is empty, the brothers exchange a look I can’t quite read. Julian stands first. Stretches.
“We’re going to go pack your things,” he says, mild as anything. “So you can come home with us.”
I blink at him. “Pack?”
“Yes, don’t you want to sleep with your fiancés?” he asks with a smile.
“I do,” I say quickly, not wanting any of the alphas to leave me.
He grins. “You’re sleeping at the penthouse tonight.
You don’t have to do anything but sit right here.
The three of us are going upstairs to grab a few bags of your clothes.
” He crouches, takes my chin gently between two fingers.
“You can come back here every single day if you want. The apartment’s not going anywhere. ”
“Okay.”
He kisses my forehead.
Cole and August rise and follow him toward the back of the shop, toward the narrow stairwell. The bell rings once as the door at the top creaks. I hear their footsteps climbing, and then the shop goes quiet again.
Ezra is on the floor beside me, against the front of the sales counter, his suit jacket wrinkling in a way I know he would never allow in an office.
He pulls me into his side without asking.
I let him. I curl into his chest, my face against his collarbone, and his arm comes warm and heavy around my shoulders, and I can hear his heart.
I let my eyes close.
He kisses the top of my head. He doesn’t speak for a long time. He just holds me, and I let him. Somewhere above us, I can hear the muffled footsteps of his brothers moving through my apartment, a drawer sliding open, and low conversation.
My left hand rests against Ezra’s chest.
After a long while, Ezra turns his face into my hair. “I was so afraid of losing you all day that I couldn’t sleep last night.” A pause. His arm tightens, just slightly. “I was half-certain you were going to say no, and I was scared that I was about to lose you again.”
I go very still against him. “Well, thank god that didn’t happen.”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid too,” I whisper against his throat. “I saw the ring under your bed and ran that same morning.” I swallow. “I walked back into this shop this morning thinking I was going to lose all of you by the end of the week. That I’d already ruined it by leaving.”
He laughs against my hair, quiet, low, more breath than sound. He brushes the tears off my cheekbones with both thumbs, slow, careful, like he’s afraid of pressing too hard. He cups my face in his hands.
“You’ll never ruin it, my love,” he says, kissing me again.