Page 76 of Between Here and the Horizon

I folded the paper again, taking a long moment to consider Ronan’s words. He orchestrated this from the beginning? He knew Sully and I would fall in love? How could he possibly have known such a thing? But then again, perhaps hecouldsee it. They had both loved Magda, after all. Perhaps Ronan knew when he met me what would transpire between his brother and I.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked quietly.

Sully held out his hand and took Ronan’s letter from me. It was already cold in the city—a fire burned and crackled happily in the grate—and I thought for a moment that he was going to cast Ronan’s letter into the fire. He didn’t, though. He placed it down on the arm of the sofa and looked at it for a very long time, shadows playing and flickering across his face as he thought.

“No. No, I don’t want to talk about it,” he said all of a sudden, smiling at me. “I just want to feel you in my arms, Lang. That okay?”

I moved over, lying my head on his chest, listening to his heart beat slow and steady beneath my ear for a long time. Sully absentmindedly stroked his hand up and down my arm for a while, before he leaned down and kissed me.

“Are you happy?” he asked me quietly.

“Yes.”

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“More than I ever thought possible.”

He went quiet for a moment, then he curled his index finger underneath my chin and lifted it, so that I was looking up at him. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life me with, Lang?” His eyes searched mine, looking for something that might or might not be there. My heart slowed, barely beating at all. Was he asking me…was he asking me tomarryhim?

Carefully he reached into his pocket, hunting for something. When he removed his hand from the pocket, he had made a fist, clutching hold of something tightly in the palm of his hand.

“I was going to do this tomorrow,” he said. “When we were standing underneath a giant Velociraptor skeleton with both the children watching so you couldn’t say no. But I see now how that might be unkind. I don’t want you to be swayed by Amie or Connor. Or an eight-billion-year-old dinosaur. I want you to make up your mind on your own, okay? So tell me, Ophelia. I need to know. Would you like to be my wife?”

I couldn’t look away from him. So much had happened in the last year. It was crazy to think that Sully was this sure of us this quickly. But then again, was it really?Iwas this sure ofhim. He was all I wanted. All I was ever going to want. I placed my hand on top of his, smiling.

“I would very much like to be your wife, Sully Fletcher. I would very much like that indeed.”

A blazing smile lit up Sully’s face. “No bullshit?” he asked.

I grinned, incapable of keeping my happiness from my face. “No. No bullshit, Sully. No bullshit.”