Chapter 173

Chapter 173
Lucas

I found Katie still in the guest room, sitting on the couch with her legs tucked under her. She looked up when I entered, and I saw the traces of tears on her cheeks.

"Hey," I said softly. "You okay?"

She nodded, wiping at her face. "Yeah. Just—it was good to talk to Emily. Hard, but good. I didn't realize how much I'd missed her until I heard her voice."

I sat down beside her, close but not crowding. "She still in England?"

"Oxford. Studying international relations." Katie smiled slightly. "She threatened to fly back and help me hide your body if you ever hurt me."

"I like her already."

"She also thinks I'm insane for getting engaged at twenty."

"She's not wrong," I said honestly. "This is insane. We're insane. But I don't care."

Katie leaned into me, resting her head on my shoulder. I wrapped my arm around her, pulling her closer, and she melted against my side with a soft sigh. The simple trust in that gesture—the way she let herself be vulnerable with me—still took my breath away sometimes.

"Me neither," she murmured.

We sat in comfortable silence for a while, my fingers tracing idle patterns on her arm. Her skin was warm and soft under my touch, and I felt her gradually relax, the tension from the emotional call with Emily slowly draining away.

"I have something for you," I said eventually. "Well, two somethings. One now, one later."

She straightened slightly, turning to look at me with curious eyes. "What?"

I pulled out the ring box from my pocket, set it on the coffee table between us. "Andrew brought these by earlier. I ordered them weeks ago, before everything. Before Chile, before the blood oath. I had this whole plan for how I was going to propose, very traditional and romantic and probably way too elaborate."

Katie picked up the box, opened it. Her eyes widened slightly at the rings, and I watched her face carefully, trying to gauge her reaction.

"They're beautiful," she whispered.

"They're not enough," I said. "Not after what you did for me. But they're a start." I took one of the rings from the box, held it up so she could see the engraving. "K&L. Our initials. Because in my world, in the way I was raised, this is how you show someone they matters. With a symbol that says 'I choose you' in a language everyone understands."

"Lucas—"

"Let me finish." I took her left hand, cradling it gently in both of mine. Her fingers were slender and strong, callused from years of training, and I traced my thumb over her knuckles. "You gave me a blood oath. You swore on your soul in front of your grandfather and your ancestors and everyone who matters to you. That's the most terrifying, beautiful thing anyone's ever done for me. I can't match it—I don't have your traditions or your certainty or your absolute fucking courage. But I can give you this. A promise in my language that I'm trying, every day, to be worthy of what you gave me."

Her eyes were shining with tears. "You don't have to—"

"I want to." I slid the ring onto her finger slowly, reverently, like I was performing some sacred ritual. It fit perfectly, catching the lamplight, and I held her hand up between us so we could both see it. "There. Now you're wearing my promise too. Both traditions, both languages. Everything we are."

Katie stared at the ring, then at me, and I saw something crack open in her expression—all the walls she'd built over the years, all the defenses she'd needed just to survive, crumbling in the face of this simple gesture.

"Help me put mine on?" I asked softly, offering her the other ring.

Her hands were shaking slightly as she took it, as she reached for my left hand. I held perfectly still, letting her slide the ring onto my finger, watching her face as she concentrated on the task. When it settled into place, she looked up at me, and the emotion in her eyes nearly undid me.

"There's more," I said, my voice rougher than I intended. I pulled out my phone to show her the sketch, but Katie wasn't looking at the screen. She was looking at me, and there was something in her gaze that made my heart race.

"Lucas," she said quietly.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. For this. For everything. For being patient and changing and—" Her voice broke. "For choosing me."

"Katie—"

She kissed me before I could finish, leaning into me with a desperation that caught me off guard. I responded immediately, my hands coming up to frame her face, and the kiss deepened, turned hungry. She tasted like coffee and something uniquely her, and I couldn't get enough.

When we finally broke apart, both breathing hard, I rested my forehead against hers. "You're killing me," I murmured.

"Good," she said, but there was no heat in it. Just affection and want and something deeper that I didn't have words for.

I showed her the sketch then, explained about the amulets and the black obsidian and all the research I'd done. She listened with that intense focus she had, occasionally asking questions, and when I finished she just stared at me like she was seeing me for the first time.

"You researched Tlingit symbols," she said, and it wasn't quite a question.

"I researched everything I could find. Called experts, bothered anthropologists, drove a mineralogist at Berkeley crazy with questions about obsidian sourcing." I smiled. "I wanted to get it right. To honor your mother's heritage, your grandfather's teachings, all of it."

"Lucas." Her voice broke on my name, and then she was kissing me again, harder this time, her hands fisting in my shirt. I pulled her closer, until she was practically in my lap, and lost myself in the feel of her—the warmth of her body, the softness of her mouth, the way she made these small sounds that drove me absolutely crazy.