Page 73 of Distant Shores (Stapled Magnolias #2)

Liem smiled at him. “Yeah.” He glanced at us. “To keep Ari company. And maybe I’ll do a class tomorrow if the weather isn’t too terrible.”

“She’ll have company soon enough,” I said quietly. Now was as good a time as any, I supposed.

“Oh?” Liem asked, stopping beside an old truck in the visitor’s lot.

I glanced at it, gaze snagging on the Vespa in the truck bed.

Dad’s Vespa.

The one that Adair had ridden to the pier to propose to me.

Adair’s hand found mine, interlacing our fingers.

I looked up at him, and he searched my eyes, a question written in his.

I squeezed his hand in answer.

“We’re leasing a place in the same building as Ari,” he explained, his shoulders straightening in pride as he slowly moved his gaze to Cody and Liem. “We’ll move in at the end of next week.”

So much change.

There was absolute silence before I finally lifted my gaze to Liem’s.

His lips were parted in shock, but as our eyes met, a huge smile bloomed on his face. “Ire?”

I shrugged. “It was a good deal.”

After the gala, Jillie had delivered the news that a family wanted to move into our house on Camellia Lane before summer was over. Ironically, it was a family who had come to the gala and had fallen in love with Live Oak, and our house was the only one that fit their needs.

After letting go of Adair’s hand with a squeeze, I walked toward the back of the truck, and Liem followed.

“If I ever need to break in, I’ll call you,” I said.

He sighed dreamily. “Just like old times.”

I’d told the story of how I’d met Liem to Adair during one of those late nights tangled up in each other.

If I had actually reached out to the sweet stranger who helped me break into Zinnia House when I accidentally locked myself outside the first week that I moved Dad here, would things have still turned out like this?

If I hadn’t taken on the weight of everything alone and collapsed in on myself, would I be standing here with a man I loved and real friends who felt like family?

“If you wanted the Vespa back,” Liem said softly, “I would give it to you. No questions asked. I didn’t…

.” He trailed off, then ran his tattooed fingers over his French braided hair, a deep sadness swimming in his dark-brown eyes.

“I didn’t know it was yours when Jillie told me about it. Or your Dad’s, rather.”

I shook my head. “I like that you have it. And you buying it saved my ass.”

He studied me a moment longer before nodding. “Joint custody, then.”

I laughed. “Sure.”

My alarm buzzed in the little pocket of my skirt, and I pulled it out. “I’ve got class. Maybe I’ll catch you later?”

Thunder rolled around us again, and I reached for Adair’s hand as we said goodbye to Cody and Liem.

After ballroom class, where everyone enveloped Delly in more tear-filled goodbyes, I set out for Zinnia House, knowing my own goodbye with Delly would be a hundred times worse.

Adair had sent me a message asking me to meet him on the second floor, and when the elevator doors opened, my breath caught.

He was there, waiting for me on the bench where he’d first gone onto his knee in front of me.

His eyes flicked up to mine, and he straightened his shoulders as I hurried to him.

“Indigo,” he sighed, draping his arm around me as soon as I sat beside him.

He started playing with my hair while he reached for my left hand.

Then he tugged me to him and kissed me softly.

The sun broke out behind the clouds and streamed in from the window behind us, bringing out the gold tones in his hazel eyes .

His hand continued to play with the ends of my hair, pulling at the strands just right, sending goose bumps racing up my spine and arms, then down my legs.

The hallway was quiet in the deep breath Zinnia House seemed to always take before the dinner rush, and I fell into it with Adair.

Until he sank to his knee and presented me with my ring.

I looked down at my left hand, my lips twitching when I realized he must’ve slipped the ring off when he kissed me.

He waited for me to look at him before he asked, his voice strong and clear, “Marry me, Ireland?”

Just like the first time he asked, and the two times since—once the first time we walked inside the greenhouse and again one day we walked back to Camellia Lane together, on the road right where we’d almost crashed into each other—my heart raced.

And just like those times, I said, “Yes,” and he slipped the ring onto my finger, beaming like I’d given him the world.

“Three more?” I asked.

“Three more,” he agreed, stroking his fingers up the back of my head and massaging me tenderly. “And you’ll never see it coming.”

I laughed even as I remember him telling me about the seven times he’d asked Dad for his blessing to propose. Even as I remembered why he’d done that.

My stomach had clenched in bittersweet agony when I came across that case study on his e-reader—the one about state assisted suicide in Switzerland.

Adair had explained how he’d found a thread online about someone who had gone through with it after finding out he had the genetic marker for early onset Alzheimer’s.

How the guy had been asked seven different times to affirm his choice, to see if he would still want to leave the world when asked in seven different moods, settings, and states of mind.

He had, and he did.

It was morbid, but not entirely off brand for us when Adair had taken that idea and applied it to this. To seven tries with Dad to get an average answer of “yes.” Of seven times proposing to me, stockpiling and safeguarding memories steeped in love.

“ I had to give it all I had,” he’d said when he delivered that third proposal on the road.

And he had so much to give.

His fingers nudged my chin, bringing me back to the present, a silent question on his face.

I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to go.

Just a little longer.

Longer to memorize this moment.

Longer to sit here and know that this was mine. That it was real. Ours .

When I was finally ready, he stood up and offered me his hand.

I took it, and together we walked to the door of Apartment 3A.

And together, we knocked.