With Love, from Cold World(109)

But the idea that all that time, he’d been making this . . . it awed her.

“I had a dream about this place the other night,” he said, and something in his voice made her turn around to face him.

“Really?”

“It involved you.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh.”

He laughed, running his hand through his hair. “Not that kind of dream. Not here, anyway. It doesn’t seem like it would be very . . . comfortable.”

“Fair point.”

“In this dream, we’re just two tourists, enjoying the Snow Globe. Packing snowballs to throw at each other when the kid guarding the place isn’t looking, maybe seeing how far we can push the MPAA rating depending on how comfortable the kid is with breaking it up—”

“Hey,” Lauren interrupted. “I had it handled.”

Asa grinned at her. “I know you did. Anyway, the point is that it was a nice dream. It felt cozy. Routine in the best possible way. Do you know what I mean? Like this was just our life, these random little day dates, moments we got to spend together.”

“I do know what you mean,” Lauren said, touched by the way he described it.

“Yeah?” He tilted his head, tugging one sleeve of the cardigan down over his hand, then pushing it back up. “There was more to the dream, though. It’s weird, right, the realistic details that work their way into your subconscious? I remember you were looking at the mural, and you were excited when you saw a little part I’d added just for you. So you turned around to point it out to me, and then . . . I got down on one knee to propose.”

Lauren remembered that he’d specifically mentioned how he envisioned a post-makeover Cold World being a place that was more Instagram-ready, somewhere that inspired people to take pictures or host their most meaningful moments. She also figured that this was Asa’s way of feeling her out on whether she’d want to get married, something they’d loosely talked about but never in an immediate, okay-let’s-do-it kind of way.

“I don’t know how I feel about a public proposal,” she said, scrunching her nose and shaking her head with an expression she hoped he knew was more playful than not, even though the sentiment was true. “But other than that, yes, it sounds like a very nice dream.”

“Ha,” he said. “Noted.”

She started to reach for him, but he gestured toward the mural. “I did add a little detail just for you, though,” he said. “Do you see it?”

“Of course,” she said, turning back toward the mural and scanning it until she located the rosebush again. “It’s the little fox with the—”

Only then did it fully hit her, what he was doing, and when she turned back to find him on one knee, a ring box open in his hand, she couldn’t help it. She burst into tears. And not pretty ones, either—deep, snot-coming-out-of-her-nose hiccuping sobs.

“Oh,” he said, immediately getting to his feet and coming to wrap his arms around her. “Hey,” he said, rubbing down her back. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I was trying to warn you.”

That made Lauren pull back from him, conscious that she’d already left a wet patch on her cardigan that he was wearing. “Warn me?”

He gave her a crooked grin, and she saw that his eyes were shiny, too. “An ominous word for a marriage proposal, huh? I just meant that I know you don’t like surprises. But I also really like surprising you, so . . . I was trying to compromise. I promise if you say yes I’ll work on it.”

Lauren laughed, hugging him tighter. “Of course it’s a yes. Sorry if I ruined your moment.”

“Not possible,” he said. “But technically, I didn’t get to ask. Can I run it back from the beginning? Should I get back down on one knee?”

“That won’t be necessary,” she said. She didn’t want him to be that far away, didn’t want to lose the warmth of his nearness and the feeling of his arms around her. “But go ahead and ask, if you want to make it official.”

He tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear, looking down at her with such tenderness she almost started crying again. “Lauren Fox, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, please.”

Asa kissed her then, a deep, aching kiss that she felt tingle down in her toes, although some of that might have been the snow seeping through her flats. When he brought his hands up to cup her cheeks, they seemed to both realize at the same time that he was still holding the ring box, and had never actually presented her with the ring.

“Fuck,” he said. “Sorry. This didn’t go exactly the way I’d planned it.”

Suddenly it all made sense to her, Kiki’s little comments earlier, how on edge Asa had seemed all night. She let him slide the ring over her finger, surprised at how strange and yet comforting its weight already felt on her hand.

“It looks good on you,” Asa said.

“Not a bad souvenir,” she said. “Better than what they have at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”

He barked out a laugh. She was always gratified by how much a Ripley’s joke seemed to land with him. He just ate them up for some reason.

“I went to Cold World and all I got was this lousy T-shirt,” he said, pulling her toward him for a kiss. “And the love of my life.”