Chapter 76 – thiago #3
She turns another page and another, finding everything I couldn’t admit to her then and barely knew how to admit to myself.
So I wrote it to the one man I knew would understand me and would forgive me.
I wrote about every time I told myself I needed to put distance between us, only to find another reason to see her, and about how much harder it became to ignore the guilt of knowing she trusted me while I was still lying to her.
Remi grows more serious the farther she gets. “You were falling in love with me.”
“Yeah. Long before I was willing to admit it.”
She turns to me, lingering there for a beat, then returns to the notebook.
She knew how our story started, but she never got to see this part of it, never knew how quickly the lines between the assignment and what I felt for her started disappearing or how hard I fought against something that had already happened.
When she reaches the entries from after everything fell apart, her brow creases.
“You kept writing.”
“I did. For a while.”
“Why?”
“Because I wasn’t ready to let you go.”
She looks back down at the page.
“I wrote about you. About all the ways I loved you before I knew if you’d ever let me back into your life. The things I missed. The things I noticed once I wasn’t around you every day. I wrote about how different everything felt without you in it.”
Her fingers slow against the edge of the paper.
“I wrote about the first time you laughed with me again. The first night you fell asleep beside me without waking up tense. The first family dinner where your dad stopped looking at me like he was deciding where to bury my body. And the day we finally made love again.”
A small laugh escapes her, but her eyes are already filling with tears.
“I wrote about everything you changed for me, Remi. You made me want a life outside the job. You gave me people to come home to. And I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to give back even half of what you’ve given me.”
Remi turns another page, her thumb brushing over my handwriting before looking back at me.
“You wrote all of that to him?”
“Yeah.”
Her mouth trembles. “Thiago...”
“I didn’t know what else to do with it at the time. He was the one person I could say all of it to without having to explain myself.”
She closes the notebook and holds it against her chest.
“You should’ve shown me this sooner.”
“I know.”
“No.” She shakes her head gently. “I mean...I wish I’d known you were carrying all of this.”
I take her hand. “I wasn’t ready to give it to you then. But I wrote in it again recently.”
“You did?”
I nod toward the notebook. “There was one more thing I needed to tell him. Turn to the last page.”
She wipes a traitorous tear from beneath my eye, smiles at me, then turns to the final entry.
Pai,
Eu vou me casar com ela.*
I don’t know when I’ll ask yet, but I know she’s the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I love her in a way I didn’t know I was capable of loving anyone. She gave me a family before I even knew I was looking for one and a home in the last place I ever expected to find it.
You would have loved her too. She would have given you endless shit about your taste in cars, stolen your records, and somehow convinced you that you were the lucky one for letting her do it.
A watery laugh slips from Remi, but she doesn’t stop reading.
I wish you could meet her. I wish you could see the life I have now. I think you’d look at me and know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
I’m going to ask her to be my wife.
Remi goes completely still.
Her fingers grip the edge of the page. She doesn’t say a word, and when she finally looks at me, her beautiful blue eyes shine.
“Yes!”
Before I can say anything, she sets the notebook aside and launches herself at me. I catch her as her arms loop around my neck, and she kisses me, laughing through the tears that wet both our faces.
“Yes,” she says again. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
“Baby,” I manage when she finally lets me breathe. “I haven’t even asked you yet.”
“You did.”
I pull back enough to look at her.
She glances at the notebook beside us before meeting my eyes again. “You just took the long way to get there.”
“I actually had a plan. I talked to your parents earlier this week.”
“They knew?”
“They knew I was going to ask. They just didn’t know you’d answer before I got the chance.”
Her smile grows.
I lift her hand to my mouth and kiss her knuckles. “I believe you once told me there was only one circumstance where I was allowed to use your full government name.”
She bites her lip to keep it from trembling. I tug it free with my thumb.
“And I’d get on one knee, but I’m pretty sure I’d have to dislocate something to make that happen back here.”
She chuckles and wipes the tears from her cheeks as I keep hold of her hand and pull out the black diamond I slipped from the glove compartment with the notebook.
“Remi Isabel Cain, will you be my wife?”
“Yes,” she murmurs.
I slide the ring onto her finger, and fuck if it doesn’t look like it was always meant to be there.
Of all the ways I could have asked her, this was the only one that ever felt right. The notebook began as an assignment, but it ends with Remi.
And her answer is yes.
* I’m going to marry her.