Unable to speak, I bite my lip to hold back sobs and shouts of joy. He slips the ring onto my finger and it’s a perfect fit.
A smile widens his beautifully sculpted mouth. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Have more children with you. Fight with you. Make up with you. Wake up beside you every day.”
He rests his forehead against mine.
“I was meant for you and you were meant for me, and even when we got in our own way, even when we screwed up—because webothdid, baby—even then my soul knew, my heart knew, it was wrong being away from you. I don’t ever want to ache like that again. People don’t often get second chances like this, Yas.”
“There’s a part of me that keeps thinking I don’t deserve it,” I confess.
“Did we deserve all the shit that happened to us? The things and the people we lost? I’ve learned that life isn’t about taking what you deserve, it’s about getting all you can while you can because it’s short. Because it’s fickle. Because it takes when we least expect it. Now everything I’ve lost makes me cherish the things I have, instead of always being afraid I’ll lose them.”
He kisses the tears on my cheeks.
“Most of all you.”
When we lose things, we don’t always get them back. Of Byrd, all I have left is a stack of recipes and memories I pray will never fade. Of Henry, a wall of wishes that will never come to fruition and a small scar decorating my skin in honor, reminding me he was, if only for the briefest lifetime, a part of me and so completely mine.
I press my hand over Josiah’s heart, and it beats a fervent rhythm of reunion. I look into his eyes and lose myself in the acceptance, the trust I thought we’d never recover.
“Don’t leave me hanging, Yas.” He brushes his thumb across my lips. “You haven’t actually answered the question. Will you marry me…again?”
There are a thousand things I could say to capture how I’m feeling, to tell him what his devotion means to me. That instead of escaping into the dark, I’ll find him in it, and we’ll guide each other to the light. I touch the necklace at my throat, testing the familiar shape of the wheel, the precious weight of my first wedding ring. I tossed this into a well of wishes, certain that what I really wanted, the one I truly wished for, I would never have again. There are a million words I could utter to assure him he never has to worry about me wavering, but with an uncontainable joy and a teary smile, I choose one.
“Yes.”