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“But the moment you walked away,” Roman rushed on, “I knew I felt something for you, which I had been denying for weeks. The moment you wrote me and said you were six hundred kilometers away from Oath … I thought my heart had stopped. To know that you would still want to write to me, but also that you were so far away. And as our letters progressed, I finally acknowledged that I was in love with you, and I wanted you to know who I was. That’s when I decided I would follow you. I didn’t want the life my father had planned for me—a life where I could never be with you.”
And just when she thought she couldn’t be surprised by anything else, Roman began to kneel. Right there in the center of the street, halfway up the hill. He was about to ask her. He was truly about to ask her to be his wife, and Iris gasped.
Roman was sitting on the milk crate just as she left him, with a scowl on his face. And a cat curled up in his lap.
P.S. If you see me too much, you’re bound to tire of my sad snail stories. Dear Iris, The garden it is. Your Kitt P.S. Impossible.
“I won’t look at you as you read. You can pretend I’m not even here.” “Impossible, Iris.” “How come, Kitt?” “Because you’re highly distracting.”
“Marry me, Iris Elizabeth Winnow,” Roman whispered, drawing back to look at her. “I want to spend all my days and all my nights with you. Marry me.”
It’s not a crime to feel joy, even when things seem hopeless. Iris, look at me. You deserve all the happiness in the world. And I intend to see that you have it.”
“Iris,” said Roman, “you are worthy of love. You are worthy to feel joy right now, even in the darkness. And just in case you’re wondering … I’m not going anywhere, unless you tell me to leave, and even then, we might need to negotiate.”
“I’m telling you that Roman Carver Kitt is in the garden, waiting to marry you.”
He didn’t know why she suddenly began to blur. Why her edges melted before him, as if she were a vision. A dream about to fade. Not until he blinked and tears slipped down his face.
“And now to conclude our service,” Keegan said, shutting the book, “seal your vows with a kiss.” “At last,” Roman said, despite the fact their vows had taken only half a minute.
Iris laughed. Gods, he loved the sound, and he drew her closer. He kissed her thoroughly; his tongue brushed against hers, and he reveled in the slight gasp she gave him.
If only she could bottle this moment. If only she could drink from it in the days to come, to remember this feeling of warmth and wholeness and joy.
She whispered, “I want to touch you.” “Now that wasn’t in the letter,” he said wryly. “I would have framed it on the wall had it been.”
“My Iris,” he said, “there is no question that you are the brave one, all on your own. You were writing to me for weeks before I roused the courage to write you back. You walked into the Gazette and took me and my ego on without a blink. You were the one who came to the front lines, unafraid to look into the ugly face of war long before I did. I don’t know who I would be without you, but you have made me in all ways better than I ever was or could have ever hoped to be.” “I think you and I are simply better together, Kitt,” she said,
Kissing him in the dark was entirely different from kissing him in the light. When the sun had gilded them hours ago, they had been eager and clumsy and hungry. But now, in the shadows of night, they were languid and thorough and curious.
Dear Kitt, I never told you how relieved I was to discover you were Carver. I never told you how much I loved those morning runs with you. I never told you how much I loved to hear you say my name.
I never told you how often I reread your letters, and how I now feel agonized, to know they are lost to me, scattered somewhere in Marisol’s B and B. I never told you that I think the world of you, that I want to read more of your words, that I think you should write a book and publish it. I never thanked you for going to the front lines with me. For coming between me and the grenade. I never told you that I love you. And I regret that, most of all.
The paper unfolded like wings in her hands. His words met her like a blade. She bowed over them.
