As soon as he was off the bed, I grumbled something about only making him toast as I climbed off and started walking toward the stairs.
“Seriously, who messes up cerea—” My words and feet immediately stopped when I was two steps down and looking at the ground floor.
My next breath was audible as I took in the sight. Made up of dozens of the thick papers that Jagger used for his drawings was the outline of a large heart, the bottom of which looped around to make the heart also look like an infinity symbol—my name making up the right side of the heart. Inside of the open space was WILL YOU MARRY ME?
Jagger’s arm went around my waist, and his lips went to my ear. “So, is that a yes?” he asked softly as he lifted a ring in front of me.
“Jagger,” I said on a breath, and took the ring from his fingers.
I felt his lips pull into a smile as he placed soft kisses on my neck. “That’s not a yes.”
I turned in his arms and crushed my mouth to his. “Yes, that’s a yes!”
His arm tightened around me as he pressed his lips to mine again and deepened the kiss, and we both grunted when we fell back onto the stairs before laughing—never once stopping the kiss.
Pushing against his chest to lift myself up, I looked into his bright eyes and shook my head to gather myself. “I thought—I thought I’d kind of asked you in Seattle. We’d already talked about it, and—”
“And did you really think I was going to let you take this from me?” His wide smile matched my own, and I tried to figure out how to respond to that before giving up and holding the ring between our faces.
“Are you going to put it on for me?”
“That is part of my job,” he teased, and took it from me. Grabbing my left hand, he slowly slid the ring onto my finger, his green eyes holding mine as he did. “Grey LaRue, will you let me take care of you and love you for the rest of our lives?”
My eyes started watering, and I nodded my head quickly.
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” I choked out, and leaned in to kiss him again, but sat back when I felt him reaching into his pocket.
“Grey, there’s something I’ve wanted to ask you since we were thirteen years old. I will admit I was f**king terrified to ask you; for weeks I tried to say something and it just wouldn’t come out. We’d been best friends for so long by then that I kept thinking I’d lose my friend if I actually asked, so I stopped trying. Then one morning I decided I’d rather ask and risk losing you than never tell you.” His lips tilted up in a quick smile and his eyes shifted down to the folded-up paper in his hand, then up to look at me again. “I knew I’d chicken out again, so I wrote it down to give to you at the dock. But when I got there, I saw Ben kiss you, and when you finally saw me, you ran up to me to tell me that he’d asked you out. You were so excited that I put the paper back in my pocket and never showed it to you . . . but I kept it.”
I wiped at my wet cheeks, and stared at him in amazement. “What is it, Jag?”
With a deep, steady breath, he gave me another tight-lipped smile and handed the paper over. It looked and felt old, and for long seconds I couldn’t open it—I could only stare at it, in disbelief that Jagger had written this more than nine years ago and had kept it all this time. I slowly unfolded the note that had obviously been opened and refolded countless times, and my heart stopped when I read the words.
Can I keep you?
“You were going to give me this the day Ben asked me out?” Jagger nodded and my chin started trembling even harder. “You’d been trying to tell me this, and I’d had no idea. And you kept it all these years? Why didn’t you say something then?”
“It wasn’t our time then,” he said simply.
I hung my head and kept my eyes on the paper. I couldn’t believe what I was holding, and I couldn’t believe that he’d chosen those words for me. But it shouldn’t have surprised me, this was Jagger we were talking about; and when he started explaining the note, I couldn’t stop smiling even through my tears as the memories came back to me.
“Do you remember when we were nine and you kept watching Casper over and over again . . . and making me watch it with you?” Jagger laughed hesitantly. “I hated that movie because it was like five or six years old, and about a little boy ghost who turned into a teenager, and I thought that was creepy, but you couldn’t seem to get enough of it. But I still watched it with you every time because I loved the way you smiled like Casper was talking directly to you when he asked the girl while she was sleeping if he could keep her. Four years later I still thought about that smile of yours, and even today I can remember how you seemed to melt at that line every time.”
I read the words on the small paper over and over until my tears made it too hard to see. Jagger took the note out of my hands and placed it on the stairs before cupping my cheeks so he could wipe at my tears.
“So, Grey, can I keep you?” he whispered, and a soft sob left me as I threw my arms around him, crushing my body to his.
“Yes. Yes, you can. I love you,” I choked out, and his arms tightened around me.
“I love you too, Grey LaRue.”
He held me there on the stairs as I finished crying and we talked about the movie that I was now dying to watch again—to Jagger’s horror—and started talking about when to get married.
“Oh my God! I need to tell my parents! I need to tell Graham and Janie, and you need to tell Charlie.”