“Do you remember how we left things?”
“Not on a good note, I know that much.”
“You gave me an ultimatum,” she said. She put the coat over her arm, as if waiting to see how things went before accepting the gift entirely. “You said I either had to say yes to marrying you, or it was over between us. Do you remember that?”
I sighed. “No,” I said. “I don’t. All I remember is going over there and feeling a whole mess of emotions, and apparently, I made a complete ass of myself. I don’t know why I would give you an ultimatum, that’s not like me. I guess I was just so afraid of losing you.”
“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t have lost me if you had just given me a choice. You know me better than most people. You should’ve known I wouldn’t take kindly to being told what to do like that.”
“You’re right,” I let out a soft laugh. “Honestly, what the fuck was I thinking?”
She laughed too, “I have no idea.”
“I’m so sorry, Kat,” I said. “I should’ve never tried to control you like that. And I promise, it will never happen again. If you decide to give me another chance, that is.”
She smiled, and slowly put the coat on. “So, you won’t demand that I marry you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t care if youeverdecide you want to marry me. We can be whatever you want us to be, from now until the end of time, as long as we can betogether.” I reached out for her, and she let me take her in my arms. “I love you so much, and I want us to be a family.”
She took one of my hands away from her back and placed my palm on her stomach. “I do too,” she said. “I never thought I would want all of this—but I do. I want it all, and I want it with you.”
I kissed her, softly, and ran my hand through her messy hair. When we pulled apart, I grinned and gripped her arms gently. “Does this mean you’re coming with me to Japan?”
“Do you still want me to?”
“I need you to,” I said. “We won’t get this deal without you. You know that.”
She nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. You do need me.”
We kissed again and then the pilot called out from the doorway to let me know that everything was ready for departure. “Great,” I called back. “We are going to have one more passenger with us.”
“Yes, sir. Not a problem.”
We headed for the stairs.
“Oh,” she said. “And maybe on our way back, we can meet my family in Hawaii. I’m sure my dad could arrange for Vic and your mom to fly out and we could all have Christmas together on the beach.”
I kissed her on the head. “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”
Inside the plane, it seemed to dawn on Kat that she didn’t have anything with her, but I told her we would buy her a whole new wardrobe if she wanted when we got to Japan. Then we got buckled in our seats and soon the plane was taking off.
Once we were high enough in the air, the pilot told us we were allowed to move about the cabin or retire to the sleeping room if we were tired. Kat undid her belt and stood up, reaching for my hand.
“C’mon,” she said. “Let’s go check out the sleeping cabins.”
“I can’t sleep on planes,” I said.
She winked at me. “Who said anything about sleeping?”
Excitedly, I followed her down the aisle and into the cabin in the back. The room was small and taken up mostly with what looked sort of like a folded out futon. Much to my surprise, there were seat belts fashioned in between the cushions of the bed. I smirked when I saw them. “I guess those are for emergencies, if you can’t get back to your seat in time?”
“Or maybe they put them in here for fun,” Kat said.
“Fun?”
She sat down on the ‘bed’ and laid back, putting her hands over her head and gripping a belt in each hand. “Since I didn’t get a chance to pack, that means I don’t have my handcuffs with me, but I think these might do just fine.” She blinked her eyelids at me wickedly.
“You’re insane.”