At least, a diamond ring
Ruthie’s POV
Eliot‘s lips are too soft on mine—warm, familiar, and full of something that I didn’t know I missed until now.
I think I forgot how to breathe. His forehead is on mine, and his eyes are closed. The atmosphere between us seems tense yet serene, like a silent apology.
“I shouldn’t have just disappeared,” he murmurs. The voice that used to read me poetry until I fell asleep trembles slightly. “You should have had better than that, Ruthie. You were owed an explanation. You deserved... everything. ”
I search his eyes, making them meet mine. They’re much darker than I recall—tired looking, glassy, slightly confused. The spark I adored, that forever suggested mischief, is extinguished. “Then why did you?” The words come out colder than I’d intended, an armor to protect me from the foolish hopeful beat in my chest.
“I’m not,” he cuts me off, his voice hard and broken. He looks me in the eyes and I feel my heart stop when, for the first time, I actually see tears forming in his eyes: bright and terrifying. “I didn’t want you to ever see me like that. Feeble. Ill. I didn’t want you to need… to look after me.”
His reasoning kicks me in the stomach. “Watch what, Eliot?”
“I thought I would just go away and maybe you wouldn’t have to see me do that. Maybe you could just hate me. It seemed… milder than forcing you to pity me. Kinder than making you my nurse.”
My chest tightens until it hurts. The world seems smaller, contracted to this car, to the man who is unraveling in front of me. “Eliot…”
He lets out a shaky laugh that isn’t really a laugh at all. It’s pure hopelessness. “I was dumb, I know. I was a coward. But every night I thought of you. Every time I tried to forget, every single time I told myself I’d done the right thing, it just made me remember that much. Your laugh. How you nibble on your pen while you write. I mean, everything.”
Before I know it, tears are in my eyes, stinging as they are hot and angry. “You’re an idiot,” I whispered, the word choking with unshed tears.
“I know.”
“You didn’t just vanished. You stole something from me. Deprived me of the ability to make my own decisions.
He sighs.
“You made the decision for me that I was too weak to handle it. You left staring down at my phone, convinced I’d done something wrong.” I gave the dashboard a light punch. “Self-serving, complete moron.”
“Still your idiot?” he whispers with a voice as shaky as my own hands.
I study him for a long moment. The face—the one I’d dreamed about for months—is so fragile now. Not the dashing, maddening disappearing man, but someone who’s been tackling shadows I didn’t even know existed.
I reach for his hand. His fingers are chilled, yet all at once they clench around mine with a sense of urgency, it's like they’re grabbing for something to hold on to. “Always.”
He exhales with a shaky, deep sense of relief. “I love you, Ruthie. I never stopped. Not for one second.”
The words hit me like a heartbeat I’ve been dying to hear. I feel them before I can even think. “I love you, too,” I say—and I really mean it, more than I probably should, more than is safe.
He kisses my temples.
“Let’s take you home.”
Home. The word sounds somehow alien, resurrected. We roll past the silent houses, thump-thumping under the windshield wipers as they sweep away the drizzle. Neon city lights dance across the glass, tinting his face subtly in neon and shadow.
His hand stays on mine the entire time, his thumb making tiny, circular motions on my skin. I don’t talk much. I’m just listening to the hum of the engine, and to his voice syncing up with one soft, sad song on the radio after the other. I’m in the middle of figuring this out. The whiplash is staggering.
How do you go from grieving a ghost, to grieving a man who is right there beside you, his hand warm in yours?
When we stop in front of my building he doesn’t get under way immediately. He kills the engine and the silence that replaces the racket is total. He only looks at me—looks deep—and I can tell he’s trying to memorize my face as if it's what he needs to keep him alive.
"I'm serious this time," he says in a deep, urgent voice. “No more running, no more lies. I don’t know how long I have, Maybe a year, Maybe less, But I want forever with you, Ruthie, even if forever is smaller than we thought. I want those stupid arguments about the thermostat and ordering pizza on Tuesdays. I want to go through it all.”
I don’t know what to say. My throat is too tight. I just nod, tears falling down my cheeks, warm on my cold skin.
He smiles and wipes them away with his thumb. “Don’t cry. Not tonight.”
He gets out, walks around the car in the damp air, and opens my door like a gentleman, the same way he always did when things were simple.
The rain has stop, leaving the streets glistening under the lamps. Everything smells of wet ground and dark roast from the 24-hour coffee joint across the road.
He takes my hand and leads me to the door. My heart is at once full and heavy, a joyful terrible weight.
We linger a second under the dim awning, neither of us wanting to be the first to shatter the fragile moment. Then he says, “Wait here,” and says back toward his car.
I frown, perplexed. “Eliot?”
He doesn’t respond, he just briefly leans in through the car window, scavenging for something in the console. I tilt my head, interested, a small smile tugging at my lips despite my efforts.
When he walks back he’s concealing something behind his back.
“What are you doing?” I ask, laughing unsuccessfully.
He halts just before me, near enough that I can catch the faint trace of that cologne, the same that I once kept a bottle of, long after he was gone. Then he drops to one knee.
For a split second, I lose the ability to speak. My first reaction is to laugh, to think this is a joke, a fever dream. But the little well-worn silver box in his hand catches the light. It’s trembling a little in his hand. My heart doesn’t just stop; it seizes. “Eliot…”
“It’s all moving so fast,” he says hurriedly, voice away. “And I know I don’t deserve it. Not for what I did.
But Ruthie, I don't have years to waste. I tried living without you for months and I found out I don't want to. Not for a minute. And if I’m going to fight what’s happening to me, I want to fight it with you. As my wife.”
My eyes fill with tears faster than I can wipe them away. “Eliot, I —”
He smiles through his own tears. “I’m not looking for big promises or the right time. I just want you. Every messy, loud, beautiful, brilliant part of you.”
I put my hands over my mouth. “You’re serious?” ”
“As I’ve ever been.”
The world blurs. I feel like my heart is too big for my chest. “You’re insane,” I mutter, laughing and crying at the same time.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “But I am yours, if you will have me."
And just like that, every doubt, every angry night, every ghost of him I held against him, it all falls apart. I’m not just forgiving him; I’m choosing him. The pain, the joy, the end that cannot be avoided. I’m choosing all that.
I nod, tears running down my face. “Yes,” I whisper. “Of course, yes.”
He laughs and kisses me on the cheeks as he slid the ring into my finger.
Then, from behind us, a voice cleaves through the rain-soaked atmosphere.
“Ruthie!”
Startled, I turn as my heart leaps in my throat.
Aiden is running up from the street toward us, still holding his phone in his hand, his hair disheveled as if he’d been pacing for hours. His voice, tight with concern.
He’d been calling. I’d ignored it.
“I’ve been trying to call you for an hour, I was worried—”
He halts mid-sentence. He stops dead. His gaze rests at Eliot, on my tear-stained face, on the ring box that is still open in Eliot’s hand, on the ring that is half-way on my finger.
The world seems to freeze around us. The tableau is horrifying: Eliot, still holding my hand, his face hardening as he sees a competitor. Me, frozen in place, my hand halfway between them. Aiden, also breathing heavily, the shock on his face transforming into dawning, painful comprehension.
There’s silence. The street buzzes with traffic in the distance, and the rain falls as it drips from the roof. And just like that, the perfect—or at least, ours—moment turns into something impossible.
My heart is pounding so hard I can barely hear myself think.
I pull my hand halfway from Eliot’s and step back, suspended between them both.
“Aiden,” I whisper, but I can barely get the words out.
He doesn’t respond. His eyes dart back and forth between me and Eliot—between the man who shattered my heart and the man who was helter-skelter attempting to repair it. Between now and then.
Then he exhales slowly, a painful, controlled breath. He withdraws to the pavement.
The expression on his face says it all. It’s not anger. It’s worse. It’s resignation."
He forces a tight, brittle smile, nods once, and his voice is sharp when he whispers, “Congratulations.”
And he’s turned and walking away before I can stop him, before I can tell him.
The ring in Eliot’s hand gleams under t
he streetlight, but all I can see is Aiden’s back as he fades into the black.
My heart splits clean in two.