that gesture that reassured her and pleased them both. He watched her eyes widen to saucers as she gazed at the ring.
The platinum band was what the jeweler had called a “bypass shank,” a decidedly unromantic name for something that reminded him of the heart bracelet he’d bought her, the way the band swirled in a delicate curl around the solitaire diamond, holding it into place.
“They finished sizing it and called me to pick it up. That’s where I went on my errand. It’s what I’ve been waiting on, why I’ve held out on a date to move in together. I was trying to let it be a surprise, but if they’d needed one more day, I would have had to tell you. I never meant to get you upset like this.”
As she raised dazed eyes to him, he saw the question in them. He lifted a shoulder. “If we’re waiting for spring for the wedding, but moving in together now, I wanted something that said we’re committed to one another. That we’re not just shacking up. It might sound kind of old fashioned, but…”
He stopped as her tears spilled out. In the next heartbeat he had her up in his lap, holding her close. She’d clasped both hands over his, holding the ring, and had the knot of their interlaced fingers under her breast, her body curled over it as he held her in his arms.
“I feel silly,” she said. “I thought…you were holding back on moving in together because of…what I just said.”
He freed his hands from hers to take possession of her left one. As she watched, he slid the ring onto her finger, over her knuckle, held tight when her fingers curled over his.
“I want you,” he said. “Today, tomorrow, forever.”
More tears, but there was a smile in there, too. She would forever be a mix of strengths and fragility. A bewildered angel, but an angel nonetheless, with all the strength of Heaven behind her.
He slid both arms around her again, pressed his mouth to her cheek. Then her lips, when she tilted her head back and he could take that deep, lingering draught of her that made the world steady and wild at once. Like her poem.
As they eased back from one another, he met her gaze. “You weren’t wrong. Your happiness is the most important thing to me. And so much is new to you. I can’t help but consider that when I make decisions. If I hold back, it’s because I don’t want to stand in the way of your dreams, Daralyn.”
“You’re a part of those dreams,” she said, sniffling. “Unless you mean you don't want to take that journey with me. When I imagine my dreams coming true, big and small, I imagine you sharing them with me. And what makes me feel even more wonderful is imagining being at your side when yours come true, too.”
She looked at him with her big soft eyes, and he couldn’t imagine his life without her. She wasn't settling for someone as broken as him, or him for her. It was believing he deserved someone as amazing as her, someone who had taken his broken pieces, same as he’d taken hers, and they’d formed a stained-glass window out of it.
His favorite part of church had been looking at those colored pieces of glass, the way the light was always different through them, at morning, high noon, or the full moon at midnight mass. Hell, the streetlight in the parking lot shining through it on a cloudy night.
“I have all my big dreams. I have the store, my family." His throat and chest felt weighted down with the happiness, and it was a good feeling. "You."
She glowed, but her expression became thoughtful again. "I think you have one more big dream. One you don't talk about. Will you trust me with it? I like the idea of sharing our dreams and knowing, even if we don't get all of them, we know one another, our whole hearts, every corner."
He nodded, looked away, then looked back at her. Said it out loud. "I want kids. Three of them. I don’t care about them being our blood. That doesn't matter to me. Mom loves you as much as she loves Les and Julie, sees all of you as her daughters. It tells me blood doesn’t matter when it comes to being parents.” He set his jaw. “I know with me being in a wheelchair, and your psychiatric history,