Chapter Thirteen Julia #3
“Then we’ll move wherever you want to go. As long as I’m with you, I’m home.” Harry tugged on her hand, forcing her to turn around in the narrow aisle.
Julia’s breath left her chest as he fell to one knee.
“I love you,” he said again. “I love your brilliance, your sense of adventure, your inner fire, your unwavering moral compass. I love the life we’ve built together—the real life, not the past few days with my family, but just us.
I love the person I am when I’m with you.
Please, Julia, marry me. I don’t have a ring, but—” He hesitated.
“I promise to get you one, as soon as I can.”
The silence stretched out for a long beat, then an old woman a few rows back crowed, “If you don’t marry him, sweetheart, I will!”
Her comment tore a laugh from Julia’s chest, a laugh that she realized was mingled with tears.
Oddly, she remembered something her mother used to say: I love you so much it hurts. What else was love if not letting someone under your guard, drawing them close enough that it was wonderful and joyful and, yes, occasionally painful?
Harry had done an awful thing, but he said he’d been a different person back then, and Julia needed to believe him. She needed to trust that the past two years mattered more than the upheaval and secrets of the past week.
He was asking her to marry him—to spend the rest of their lives together, to build a future, and a family, together. Didn’t this commitment matter so much more than whatever he’d done in his past?
“Yes,” she heard herself say.
“Yes?” Harry repeated.
“I love you. Yes. Yes!”
Amid scattered applause and whoops of approval, Harry rose to his feet and embraced her. Dimly, Julia realized that a few of the other passengers were filming the whole thing. She didn’t care, just held him close as he pulled her into a kiss.
When they finally broke apart, Harry’s head was tipped downward toward hers. “Are we still going to Frankfurt? Or should I book us a flight somewhere else?” he asked. “London, to see Abby? Paris? The Maldives?”
“You didn’t bring a suitcase,” Julia pointed out, and Harry just shrugged.
“I can buy T-shirts and sandals wherever we go.”
The prospect of running away with him was so very tempting.
Then Julia thought of his family, who would be spending several more days at the island, eating and gossiping and judging one another.
They would all whisper that Julia couldn’t hack it—especially Harry’s mother, Tara, who had treated her with cool disinterest at best.
If Julia had any hope of winning over her future mother-in-law, she couldn’t start things off by running.
“I think we should go back to Olympus,” she declared.
Harry’s brows drew together. “Don’t you want to take some time away, just the two of us? Far from my family and all their meddling?”
“But that’s just it. They’re your family,” Julia repeated. “And we’re engaged, so for better or worse, they’re going to be my family, too. If we’re really getting married, then we need to do things the right way. We should go back and see this reunion through.”
Harry nodded slowly. “If you’re sure,” he said, pulling out his phone and starting toward the front of the plane. “Let me call us a helicopter to the port.”
Julia started to follow, only to pause before a middle-aged couple who were sitting together.
“I think I saw you two filming the proposal,” she began.
The couple looked embarrassed at being caught, and she smiled, trying to put them at ease.
“I was wondering—would you AirDrop the video to me?” Julia held out her phone, showing her home screen: a scanned photo of her and her mom, from the summer Julia was seven.
“Oh, of course!” The woman pressed play, then frowned down at her phone. “Wait—what did I do? Jerry?” She held out her phone to her husband, who chuckled.
“You recorded in selfie mode, Hannah. This is a video of your face.”
Hannah winced. “But you got one, didn’t you?”
Jerry was already pulling out his own phone, winking at Julia. “Luckily for you, I’m not as technically challenged as my wife….” He trailed off, then laughed. “Or maybe I am.”
His phone revealed a series of blurry gray photos, documenting the carpet that ran down the aisle.
At the front of the plane, Harry looked back expectantly. “Jules? What’s going on?”
“Coming!” she called out, then turned back to the couple, amused. “Thank you for trying.”
It would have been fun, showing the video to her aunt and uncle and especially to Abby, but maybe it was better that Harry’s proposal remain undocumented.
It would become the sort of story that was told and retold for years, embellished each time, until Julia and Harry were old someday and bickered cheerfully about the details.
Julia pulled her phone from her pocket and typed out a quick text to Abby. Change of plans, I’m staying in Greece with Harry. Will call you later.
She could do this—could go back to Olympus and show the Ellenes she was stronger than they realized. That she belonged in their world, even if she hadn’t grown up with a trust fund.
They had better get used to her, because she wasn’t going anywhere.