Lukas lifts my hand to his mouth and presses his lips to my knuckles, right above the ring. “I would have paid a hundred million, you know,” he whispers.
I rise onto my tiptoes and whisper back, “I would have been yours for free.”
We exchange vows. His are short, because Lukas Lazarev doesn’t waste words. He tells me I gave him a reason to live when he’d forgotten he wanted one, and promises to spend whatever time he has left making sure I never doubt that I was chosen.
Mine are slightly longer, because I’m me and therefore biologically incapable of brevity. I tell him that I spent six years believing love was just a prettier word for loss, that wanting someone was the fastest way to guarantee they’d be taken from you. And then he walked into a dark office on my birthday and looked at m
