Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 146548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Our mouths meet with emotion swelling up inside, water misting around us and light streaming through treetops.
I’ve never been happier and more in love.
After a long swelling moment, we pull back. And I look between the ring boxes that we both still clutch.
“Let’s do this,” Farrow says like he’s about to share a plan. But he just pops open the wooden box. He plucks out the wedding band that he bought me, and he pinches the ring between two fingers. Showing me the simple gray band, grooved like a tree. “It’s not sterling silver. It’s titanium and didn’t cost a lot.”
He knows that makes me love it even more. And now I’m trying hard not to smile, but it’s a losing battle.
Farrow slips my titanium wedding band on his own ring finger. Off my confusion, he explains, “I’ll wear yours and you’ll wear mine as engagement rings. And then on our wedding day, I’ll take the ring off and finally put it on your finger.”
Alright, my brain is obsessed with this plan. Like way too damn much. “Did you just think of this on the spot?”
“I’d love to say I did, but no.” He waves me on to open the black box. “It’s something I thought about when I realized we were the same ring size.”
Before I open the box, I ask him, “How’d you get the ring without the media knowing?”
He pulls out his comms earpiece, as though remembering the radio connection. Even if it’s muted. And he answers, “Oscar and Donnelly.”
“Your best friends,” I define.
Farrow surprises me by just raising his brows in a teasing wave. Not denying how close those two guys are to him. And his gaze falls to my hands.
I open the box and pull out a sleek black tungsten band. “You should know, man. It took me a solid millisecond to pick this out.”
He grins like I’m full of shit, and he’s about to say something—probably, sure or okay—but he notices the engraving on the inside of the band. His smile softens as he takes the ring from me. Just for a closer look.
“Dum spiro, spero,” he reads the Cicero quote. His eyes well up again.
On a day that rocked us both, he said he loved that quote. It was a quiet moment inside a storm. The memory is as tranquil as the quote itself.
While I breathe, I hope.
Farrow nods a few times, tears rising. “Here.” He places the black band in my palm, not wanting to slip a ring on my finger yet. “It’s perfect, wolf scout.” And with another growing smile, he adds, “Especially since you took forever to pick it out.”
I grimace. “You can’t know that one-hundred percent,” I contend and slip the black band on my ring finger.
“I do know that one-hundred percent,” Farrow says. “Because I know you one-hundred percent.”
Our last day in Greece has snuck up on us, and Farrow and I have left the yacht to spend the night in Corfu. Alone, together, both of us soaking in the peaceful quiet before we return to a media frenzy in Philly.
We’re not hiding our engagement.
So when we’re back home, whatever paparazzi presence existed before may be infinitely larger, more aggressive, invasive—we don’t know. Because I’m the first to be engaged out of my siblings and cousins.
I’m paving the way.
But not even the media can deter my brain from replaying the proposal. It’s on loop. And I remember how my whole family and SFO joined us at the lagoon. Farrow asked them to hike the same trail about thirty minutes after us, and I had no clue.
Janie, my best friend, ma moitié—when she saw me, she had her hand to her heart like she could feel mine swelling.
Having all of them there was everything.
Warm water rains down on me in a stone shower, made to look outdoors with a fogged skylight, but I’m inside our hotel bathroom. Private. As safe as it can be, and I’m not scared.
My muscles slacken with the warmth and gathering steam. I stand right beneath the downpour, my bare skin flush from the heat. I rub soap on my abs, picturing Farrow coming in behind me, my number one fantasy.
I go lower with the washcloth, hot breath ejecting from me. And hanging up the cloth on a hook, I rest my left hand on the stone slab wall. Whatever I planned to do suddenly flits away. Because the black ring on that hand is staring back at me.
I’m wearing his ring.
My eyes burn.
And then I hear the shower door swing open. In my peripheral, I see that it’s him. So I don’t turn back around. I wait, and his six-foot-three build pushes warmly up against me—God, this is real. His arm curves around my abs, chest melded firmly to my back.
I stare straight ahead. I feel Farrow, his left arm extending across the top of my arm. And he interlaces our fingers on the stone slab wall. His hand sheathing my hand, our rings on our fingers are in perfect sight together.