Roses Revenge novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: What He Held Back

Elliot was sitting at the top of the steps, and he had clearly rehearsed this.

I could tell because he stood up like a man about to give a speech, and then forgot the first line.

"You said ask you after court," he said.

"I did."

"It's after court."

"I noticed."

I was not smiling yet, but my eyes had already started.

His hands were shaking.

He put them in his coat pockets so I would not see, and then he took them out again, as if he had promised himself something.

"I have two things," he said. "I'll do the small one first."

He took an envelope from his inside pocket.

It was cream-colored and soft at the corners, and my name was on the front in a slanting, old-fashioned hand.

I stopped breathing.

"That's Gran's writing."

"She gave it to me three years ago, in her last week. She told me to hand it over when you asked somebody to marry you, or somebody asked you."

"She said that?"

"She said, in this exact order: 'Don't give it to her when she's sad. She'll cry on the ink.'"

A laugh broke out of me, short and wet.

"That's her."

"I almost gave it to you when Colton proposed," he said. "I was a coward, and then I was wrong. She would have tossed me out of her kitchen."

I took the envelope and held it against my chest.

"What's the other thing?"

He had plainly planned to kneel.

His knees would not do it, so he stood on the step below mine and looked up.

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