Page 213 of Just One More Thing

I turn in his arms and wrap my hands around the back of his neck.

I am not letting go of this man. Not after finally making it all the way here.

He rests his forehead against mine, smiling. “You said yes.”

“I said yes.”

His eyes close for one beat, like he’s saving it somewhere.

Around us, the sunrise keeps building. The candles are still flickering, though daylight is starting to win. The foundation sits patient and solid, waiting for everything that comes next.

I pull back enough to look at the ring again.

It’s perfect.

It’s so perfectly sentimental and devastatingly Jake that I want to burst into tears again.

“You had it made to look like the bubblegum ring.”

“I did.”

“Jake Wheeler.”

“Emory Donovan.”

I look from the ring to the foundation to him.

“You built us a house.”

He shakes his head slightly. “I built us a start. The rest is up to you. Whatever you want. However you want it.”

The girl who said thank you when she meant I love you is standing on the island she helped name with the boy she has always loved, wearing a ring he had made from a memory, looking at the beginning of a home he started before she knew how to stay.

And she is done running.

I take his face in both hands and kiss him.

The kind of kiss that isn’t about heat or urgency, but the kind that says all the things words took me too long to learn how to say.

I love you.

I choose you.

I’m staying.

When I pull back, his eyes are wet.

Jake Wheeler is crying, and I am not equipped for this.

“Oh no,” I whisper, brushing my thumb across his cheek. “You can’t do that.”

He huffs a laugh. “Can’t do what?”

“Be emotional at me like this. I’m already hanging on by a very thin, frayed thread.”

He smiles and kisses the center of my palm.

I look past him toward the candles and the path and the beauty of the whole thing, then back at him.