The Internet Told Him to Leave Me, but He's Still Holding Me novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Mine

We knelt there on the shop floor, face to face, both of us holding out a ring.

Twenty people held their breath around us.

"You found it," Knox said.

"I needed change for a fifty."

"I knew it." He shook his head slowly. "I knew it the second you started being weird at the counter."

"I wasn't weird."

"You gave a man his change in fives, Annika. Forty dollars in fives."

He opened the box.

Inside was a small old gold ring, worn thin on one side, with a little blue stone the color of a lake.

I knew that ring.

I'd seen it on Gran's hand every Sunday for two years.

I looked over at the first chair.

Gran had both hands folded on her purse and an expression of total innocence.

"She gave it to me the day after the blizzard," Knox said. "I told her what you said. About the paint. She went to her bedroom and came back with it and said, 'Don't wait too long, she's faster than you.'"

"She was right."

"I was going to ask at midnight." He looked up at the clock over the door. "You beat me by nine minutes."

"I always beat you."

"You always do."

He took my left hand in his.

His hand was shaking. Knox's hands never shake. He tattoos fine lines for a living.

"Annika Sandberg," he said. "I read your diary for three weeks and didn't tell you, and you came home anyway. I'll never hide anything from you again. Be as much as you want. Be too much. I've got room." His voice cracked. "Will you marry me?"

"I asked first," I said.

"So answer me, and then I'll answer you."

"Yes," I said. "Yes. Obviously. Yes."

He slid Gran's ring onto my finger.

It fit.

I took his huge left hand and pushed the plain gold band over his knuckle.

It fit too. The ribbon had worked.

"Yes," he said. "Obviously. Yes."

The shop went off like a bomb.

Inga screamed. The lemon-bar lady cried into a napkin. The mail carrier blew a party horn he'd been saving.

The apprentice just kept saying, "Oh my God, oh my God," with his hands on his naked upper lip.

And then somebody yelled, "TEN!"

The whole shop started counting down.

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