My Stepbrother Is My Secret Master novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Look At Me

"Columbus," I said. "Why?"

"Because I'm asking."

"You never ask."

"I'm asking now." He put his hands in his pockets, then took them out again. "Will you come?"

He looked like a boy waiting outside the principal's office.

I'd have gone to the moon.

"Yes," I said.

On Saturday I flew into Columbus alone, because he'd asked me to come alone.

I took a cab from the airport past Ohio State and the dorm where I'd lived on ramen.

We passed the museum where I'd carried a tray of champagne into a dark gallery.

I made the driver slow down.

The museum looked smaller.

Everything in Ohio looked smaller now.

The hotel hadn't changed at all.

Same lobby. Same brass elevator.

The same carpet on the eleventh floor, with the same coffee stain outside 1109.

I stood in front of 1104 at ten o'clock at night.

My hand went to my bag on its own, looking for the lace.

It wasn't there. He'd asked me to leave it in New York.

I had the collar on under my blouse, with my own name against my throat.

I knocked with my eyes open.

The door opened.

He stood there in a white shirt with the collar undone, no mask, no glasses, just his face.

Behind him, the room was the same room.

The bed. The chair by the window. The ice bucket on the dresser.

I'd knelt on that carpet a hundred times and never seen any of it.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"Come in."

I walked in and looked at everything.

The ugly brown curtains. The lamp with the dent in its shade. The print of a sailboat over the bed.

"It's hideous," I said.

He laughed, startled. "It's always been hideous."

"I always pictured it beautiful."

"I know. That's why I never told you."

On the dresser, next to the ice, lay the gold-and-black mask with the dark red stone between the eyes.

I picked it up.

It was lighter than I'd thought.

"I kept it," he said. "I thought you should decide what happens to it."

I turned it over in my hands.

Almost three years of video calls. One storm. A voice in the dark that knew me better than anyone alive.

I walked to the window and looked down at the drop.

Then I dropped the mask into the wastebasket under the desk instead.

"Too dramatic out the window," I said.

"Much too dramatic."

"Someone could get hurt."

"Rule six," he said. "You're stealing my jokes."

I turned around.

He was down on one knee on the brown carpet.

Right where I used to kneel.

My hand went to my mouth.

"I knelt here once," I said.

"I know where you knelt."

He wasn't holding a box.

He was holding a ring between two fingers, a plain gold band with one small stone.

His hand wasn't steady.

I'd never seen his hand not steady.

"Almost three years ago," he said, "you gave me one rule. I said yes because I'd have said yes to anything you asked. I still would."

He swallowed.

"So I'm asking you something with my face, in this room, with every light on. Laurel Prewitt. Will you marry me?"

I looked at him.

All of him.

His eyes, gray and wet. His mouth. The scar on his wrist, half under his cuff, the ring trembling above it.

I made him wait a heartbeat, because I could.

"Yes," I said. "Get up. Yes."

He didn't get up.

He put the ring on my finger with his hand shaking.

Then he pressed his forehead to my stomach and held on to my hips.

I put both hands in his hair.

"Yes," I said again, quieter.

When he stood up, I called my dad first, because I'd promised.

He answered on the first ring, which meant he'd known.

"Well?" he said.

"Yes."

"Took him long enough. He called in March to ask me. I made him drive down and ask on that porch. Then I made him shingle the shed again."

In the background Dorinda was shrieking.

"Put me on speaker, Gary! Laurel, sweetheart, I've already called the butler, he's crying, it's very undignified!"

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