The diner hums around us. I see no one else but my cherry red-haired girl.
“You’re insane. Have you ever been to therapy?” she asks.
“Probably am. And no.”
“This is the craziest thing anyone has ever asked me.”
“Probably that too.” I tease.
“You’re serious,” she whispers.
“Dead serious.”
She laughs. And that alone makes my chest crack. I love her. I’m dead certain on that fact.
And then she looks at me. Really looks at me. The way she did the night she showed up barefoot on my porch. The way she did when I told her I didn’t kill Ashley, and she said then I believe you. The way that tells me she’s already made her decision and now she’s just working up the nerve to say it.
“If I say yes,” she starts, and my heart slams so hard I feel it in my teeth, “you have to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“You fight. You fight for your freedom. For Wyatt.” Her hand comes up and presses flat against my chest. “And for me. You don’t give up. You don’t let them win. You come home every night, and you get into that bed beside me. Promise me. Because I don’t want the Sterling name if it’s without you in my life.”
I lean in, my lips hovering over hers. This woman is perfect. My fear was always being wanted for the wrong reasons. The money and land. The stuff that comes with my lifestyle. But Lola? She cares not just for me, but for my boy.
“I promise,” I tell her.
“Then yes.”
The word hits me like a freight train. “Yes?”
“Yes, you impossible, terrifying, beautiful man. I’ll marry you.”
Jesus, fuck. My eyes sting as I hold back actual tears. I slide the ring onto her finger, and it fits. Of course it fits. Lola was made for me.
She holds her hand up between us. The diamond catches the neon light from the window and throws tiny fractured rainbows across the table. “Holy shit,” she breathes. “I’m engaged.”
“You’re engaged,” I confirm with a grin.
“In a diner.”
“In a diner,” I repeat.
“Over milkshakes.”
“Best milkshakes in the county.”
She laughs. Grabs my face with both hands and kisses me so fucking hard I can’t breathe. The kind of kiss that tastes like strawberry milkshake and tears, and the beginning of something that’s going to change everything.
When she pulls back, she’s grinning so wide it cracks her whole face open. “Violet is going to lose her mind.”
“She’s going to threaten me again,” I say, half joking.
“Oh, a hundred percent.”
I pull her against my side. Press my lips to her temple. Feel her hand, the left hand, wearing my mother’s ring, settle against my chest.
I’ve got less than three months to prove my innocence. A war on two fronts. A dead ex-girlfriend.