Chapter 262 Who Walks In With You

Chapter 262 Who Walks In With You
Ares's POV

Ethan Drake said yes to me on the floor of a house I'd known about for thirty minutes. For one second nothing in me moved at all. Then he laughed, and that broke something loose in my chest, and the next thing I knew there was water running down my face in front of him.
I was still down on one knee, his ring shut inside my fist like a spare key.
"You said yes."
"I did."
"You actually said it."
Ethan reached down, took hold of my arm, and hauled me up off that floor.
"I've been waiting on you to ask me for about a year," Ethan said.
That set me off worse. I dragged the back of my wrist under one eye like it would do any good.
"I wasn't going to cry."
"You're extremely bad at plans."
"So are you. You bought a house."
He still had my ring in his hand, so I took it back.
"I was going to ask you first."
"You were slow."
"I was buying a ring."
"I bought a house," Ethan said.
For a second neither of us moved, and then I slid the ring onto his finger. He looked down at his own hand a long time and didn't say one single thing about it.
"You're stuck with me now."
"That was the plan," Ethan said.
My hand closed in the front of his shirt and nothing else came out of him after that. Behind us the dog woke up and started barking at the both of us from the rug, going on about it, with no idea what was going on.
"Even the dog," Ethan said, into my mouth.
We ended up on that couch, a phone each, no idea who to call first. My mother went first.
She picked up inside two rings, standing in her kitchen, a dish towel still in her hand. I turned the phone so she could see, and that towel came straight up to her mouth.
"Ares."
"Yes."
"Ares."
My mother cried a good long while and I let her. Two years back I couldn't have made that call at all. Two years back that woman had my number and I hadn't answered it once, not since Christmas.
"When do I start," she said, when she had herself back.
"Mom, it happened forty minutes ago."
"I know exactly when it happened. When do I start."
Ethan told the Drakes, because I'm not built for that kind of volume. April took one look at our hands and let out a noise that had me holding the phone away from my head just to survive it.
"YOU'RE ENGAGED."
"We are."
"HOW LONG HAVE YOU—"
"Forty minutes," Ethan said. "Same as everybody."
Asher showed up behind her shoulder, a dish still in his hand.
"About time."
"Say congratulations like a person."
"Congratulations," Asher said. "About time."
April was on to venues inside ninety seconds. Rosa ducked under everybody's elbows to get a look at the screen and got told on the spot that she'd be needing something to wear.
"She's three."
"She absolutely needs a wardrobe," April said.
"April."
"I've already got a picture of it on my phone, Ares, so you can save your breath."
Then Tom Drake took the phone away from them, and the noise on their end cut clean out.
He didn't shout. He just looked at the two of us for several seconds. That's not a comfortable thing to sit through on a screen.
"I'm happy for you boys."
My throat did something I hadn't given it permission to do. A man like that doesn't say a thing he doesn't mean.
There was no second half to it. No question about the season, about how he'd play, about who'd be watching. A man looked at the both of us and said that, and set the phone back down on the counter.
"Thank you," I said, and I had to do it twice.
Asher had the phone back in his hand inside a minute, wanting dates.
"Can we get through the night," Ethan said.
"Somebody has to organize you two. Look at you. You're crying and he's crying."
"I am not crying," I said, crying.
They rang off eventually, and the house went quiet in a way it hadn't been the whole night.
The dog was asleep again on a rug that's no good for a dog. Ethan's shoulder sat warm against mine on a couch that came with the house. The two rings kept catching the lamplight every time either of us moved a hand.
Everybody who mattered knew now. Nobody had needed telling carefully, and nobody had asked what it would do to a career.
"So," Ethan said, and lifted our hands up.
"So."
"When are we doing it."
"When we want."
"No media," he said.
"No cameras."
"Nothing in a stadium."
"Nothing anybody can put in a paper," I said. "Family. And whoever else can behave."
Ethan put his mouth right up against the side of my head. "Just us."
We sat there with the lamp still on and the dog twitching through some dream. Then he asked me the thing I'd been carrying all evening without even knowing I was carrying it.
"Who's standing up for you."
I looked at the dog instead of at him. The obvious answer had been obvious since I was twenty-two — three men who'd want it, two of them ready to fight over which.
"I don't want a best man," I said.
"All right."
"I want my mother to walk in with me."
Ethan sat up off my shoulder. He didn't laugh, and he didn't say anything soft, and I'd have taken either one and been fine with it.
"Ares. That's the best idea anybody has had all night."
"It's not a normal thing to want."
"It's not a normal family. Have you asked her?"
The dog was chasing something in her sleep. My mother's face was still up on my phone, frozen at the end of the call, that dish towel caught mid-air.
Forty minutes ago I'd gotten engaged in a room with nobody in it but the two of us, and I'd already thought about this eleven times over, and she'd been on the phone nine minutes.
"No," I said.