Page 130 of Time After Time

Ransom tugs my hand. “Come outside with me?”

I frown but rise. He leads me by the hand onto the gazebo in the back, where lanterns are glowing and the stars are sharp overhead, framed by the pitch of the mountains and the hush of snowfall.

I glance back. Everyone’s crowded near the glass doors, watching.

“Okay, what’s going on?” I ask, nowverysuspicious.

He faces me, and my breath catches.

He’s nervous.

Ransom Marchand—my confident, sometimes maddening, always magnetic Ransom—is nervous.

He drops to one knee.

I burst out laughing. I should’ve known.

“Em, focus,” he admonishes.

“Sorry.” I purse my lips. “Proceed.”

He shakes his head in mock exasperation. But this isus. “Em, here is my truth for you. Loving you has been the only thing I’ve ever gotten completely right.”

My heart stutters.

“I want to spend my life with you. I want all of it—burnt toast, snow in our boots, long nights with babies crying, morning coffee, old age, everything. I want it with you.”

The ring glows like starlight in the snow.

“Ember Rousseau…will you marry me?”

A quiet gasp escapes me.

“Yes,” I say, knees sinking to the snow with him. “Yes, yes, yes.”

The family comes out. There’s champagne. Dom Perignon. Vintage 2013.

The kids wake up, confused and delighted.

Someone throws a snowball.

Ransom kisses me under a blanket of stars, my hand clutched tight in his.

“So, when are you getting married and where?” Mama wants to know.

“Can we not do a big wedding like mine?” Freja groans. “That was hell.”

While everyone starts to discuss the kind of wedding Ransom and I are going to have, I look at him. “We should elope,” I whisper.

“You’re on,” he replies.