Page 154 of The Sun & Her Burn

“Are you serious?” I breathed on a giddy, almost panicked laugh.

I brought my hands up to secure his wrists, needing an anchor.

“Deadly,” he said. “You happened to me like a sunrise, casting light and warmth over the dark, cold shadows of my heart. I have been lonely for a very long time, and I think you have, too. I don’t want that for either of us ever again. I want you, Linnea, without a contract, without an expiration date, until the end of time if you’ll have me.”

A sob fell from my mouth, and I caught it with one hand as Adam dropped to his knees slowly before me and reachedinto his blazer pocket. The ring he brandished was the colour of sunlight, an enormous oval that glowed like he had managed to harness the sun from the sky and pour it into a diamond for me.

“You know I don’t get on my knees for just anyone,” he said playfully, but I could see how it masked the terror in his eyes. “But I would spend my life on my knees in front of your altar, worshipping you. Linnea Kai, my sunbeam, will you do me the incredible honor of being my wife?”

“Yes!” The word tumbled out of me as I fell forward inelegantly into Adam’s waiting arms.

He laughed as I pressed my mouth to his and ate the sound of his tongue until it turned into a groan. When he lifted a leg to brace himself better, he sat me on his thigh, and I gave myself over to kissing him.

My future husband.

For the first time, the idea of marrying Adam didn’t feel like some surreal plot twist in a Hallmark film.

It felt real, something I could hold in my hands and my heart.

I pulled away only when I felt his fingers sliding the ring along my skin. When I blinked down at my hand, the yellow diamond winked at me.

“It’s stunning,” I breathed.

“Sebastian helped me design it and the wedding ring,” he said quietly, pushing my rumpled hair back from my face. “It’s as much from him as from me.”

Hope bloomed so large in my heart that it threatened to choke me.

“Really?” I whispered through my tight throat.

“Really,” he repeated. “I am not the only man enamored with the girl with ocean eyes and a sunrise soul.”

“I wish we could go to him,” I said, even as I pressed closer to him.

“Later,” Adam promised. “I have a very private after-party planned for us all.”

“Adam,” I said, gathering breath to tell him the truth crushing my heart. “I l—”

His hand muffled my mouth, and he smiled at my wide eyes.

“Hold that thought for later,” he requested. “I want to be inside you after you tell me those words for the first time.”

I laughed, tipping my head back so his hand released my mouth and I could express my joy to the heavens. My gaze caught Sebastian’s, who stood with a cluster of actors and reporters on the stairs of the stage watching us. He winked and raised his hand to press it over his heart.

And I wondered if it was possible to die of happiness.

29

SEBASTIAN

“You love them.”

I yanked my gaze away from the future Mr. and Mrs. Meyers holding court over at their table on the other side of the room to look at my sister Giselle.

She looked positively gorgeous in a midnight-blue dress that made her grey eyes look like silver dollars and emphasized the unique shade of her dark red hair. I felt a pang for not giving her my full attention this evening, but it couldn’t be helped.

Adam and Linnea were getting married.

And even though Adam had made me a part of the planning, of the moment by asking me to pick out the engagement ring for her, I felt surprisingly hollow sitting across the theatre from them.