249. SAY YES, PLEASE

249. SAY YES, PLEASE
It was the last cardboard box Layla found in her old apartment.
The rooms were bare now, stripped of life, the echoes of her footsteps the only company she had. She sat cross-legged on an old dusty carpet and pulled the box closer.
When she lifted the lid, her breath hitched.
Inside was her. Her teenage life, captured and preserved in scraps of memory she had forgotten she even left behind.
Photos she never knew were taken, mostly of her smiling when she wasn’t looking. Rough sketches she’d doodled on café tissues, she had gone with Leon. Restaurant bills dated from nights after her mother had thrown away the ones she tried to save. Keychains, bracelets, trinkets and every little thing she once considered a treasure.
And tucked among them, a scrapbook.
The first page made her laugh and cry all at once. Photos pasted unevenly, a few words scrawled in Leon’s messy handwriting. He was terrible at it. But he was trying.
The number 19 was drawn in thick black marker. Ugly, uneven.
Her nineteenth birthday. He was building something for her, a scrapbook, a photo album, a memory to hold onto. The memories he forgot. There was even a car key taped inside, one she never received.
He had prepared such a perfect life for her.
A life free from worry, free from pain.
And it had all been stolen, torn away so cruelly.
Layla squeezed her eyes shut, the memory of that birthday crashing down. She’d been pregnant. Shattered, inside and out. She’d been so close to giving up completely, so close to ending the life Leon had loved more than his own.
Looking back now, she saw how reckless, how blind she’d been.
Sure, it was her life. But to him, she had been everything.
And for that alone, she had to keep living. She had to live happily.
Her tears blurred the scrapbook until the page swam before her. Not a single photo of him. Not one trace of Leon. Only her.
“You idiot,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “How could you not keep even one picture of yourself?”
The box was cleaner than the others, its contents carefully preserved.
Which meant only one thing.
He had come back.
He had come back just to save this.
He even cleaned this better than the others.
"Should have cleaned the furniture better," she whispered, sniffling hard.
By the time Layla returned to the penthouse, her heart was still raw from the discovery in her old apartment. She carried the last cardboard box with her, tucked away as if it were too precious for anyone else to touch.
But curiosity gnawed at her.
If Leon had saved so many fragments of her, would Zaley do the same?
When the house fell silent, she slipped into his office room.
Her hands moved through drawers, cabinets, and shelves until finally, beneath the lowest compartment, she found it, another box.
Her breath caught.
It wasn’t like hers, filled with teenage dreams and innocence. This one was sharper, heavier. The first things inside were files. Documents stamped with dates, addresses, and clipped reports. They are cold, clinical information. There was a file on her. A file on Lilly. Photos taken from a distance, grainy shots clearly collected by some investigator.
But as she flipped through them, the tone changed.
The angles grew closer. The lighting is softer. A photo of her walking home, clutching a grocery bag. A picture of Lilly on the swings. One of Layla sitting by the café window, her face half-hidden by her hair.
These weren’t distant surveillance photos anymore. These were personal.
Her throat tightened.
Zaley had taken them himself.
Even before he remembered who he was. Even before he knew her name belonged to his past. Something in him had recognised her, recognised Lilly. Enough to keep her, enough to guard her, enough to build this secret archive.
She pressed a trembling hand over her mouth.
It wasn’t proof on paper. It was proof in the quietest, loudest way possible. His heart had never forgotten.
The box was still open when she heard the door.
Zaley stepped inside, his white shirt unbuttoned at the throat, his hair a little dishevelled, like he had been pacing the living room waiting for her.
“Where have you been?” he asked, his voice low but edged with the kind of concern that always wrapped around his words. “The girls waited for you. They fought sleep for as long as they could… but now they’re out.”
Layla didn’t answer. She couldn’t. The weight of both boxes, the one from the apartment and the one from his room, pressed down on her chest until her throat stung.
She sat on the carpet, her hands trembling as tears spilled quietly down her face.
Zaley frowned and crossed the room, crouching in front of her. “What happened?” His tone softened instantly. “Did someone hurt you?”
Instead of answering, she reached into her pocket. Her fingers brushed against the cool metal she had been carrying all evening, and she pulled it out, a simple ring she once bought on a whim years ago; A gold band with the deep blue stone and engraved accents.
It was never worn, never given, and she has just kept it.
Zaley’s eyes flickered in surprise.
Her lips trembled, but she forced the words out, sitting on one knee and whispering like a secret she couldn’t hold anymore.
“Marry me. Right now.”
He froze.
For a moment, he just stared at her.
Zaley’s throat tightened as he turned the ring between his fingers.
"When did you buy this?" He asked her.
"Eight years back."
"And you knew you were going to marry me eight years back? You were only eighteen then."
"I knew I wouldn't let any other witch marry you. I bought it on a whim. Ayesha said someone would snatch you away, and I said, I would just tie you to me. But it felt ridiculous then.
“I don’t want big. I don’t want perfect. I don’t care if it’s just us. I just… I want you. I want this. No more waiting. Say yes. Fast. Let's get married tomorrow or now."
Zaley’s chest rose and fell, his throat working like he was holding back something powerful. Then, with a sharp exhale that sounded almost like a laugh breaking through grief, he muttered,
“Damn it, Layla… you’re stealing my job.”
She managed a shaky smile through her tears.
He cupped her face, brushing his thumb along her cheek, and in his eyes there was no hesitation, no humour left, just the kind of fierce devotion she had seen in every one of those photographs.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Right now. A thousand times, yes.”
Zaley caught her hand before she could slip the ring onto his finger. His jaw tightened, but his eyes softened as he stared at her kneeling there, her heart laid bare.
He tilted the band slightly and, for the first time, noticed the glint of blue set into it. The same shade as his eyes. His breath stilled.
“You picked my eyes,” he murmured, something raw in his voice.
Layla smiled through her tears. “Of course I did. That's the best part of you.”
The world seemed to tilt for him in that moment, as though she had bound him long before either of them realised it.
“This is the last time you kneel for me,” he said, voice low, almost commanding. “For me, for anyone. You understand?”
Layla’s breath hitched, but she nodded. “Yes.”
He tugged her up into his arms before she could say another word, crushing his mouth to hers in a kiss that burned away every trace of doubt. It was fierce, claiming, but when he pulled back, his forehead rested against hers with a gentleness only she could summon out of him.
“You’re mine, Layla,” he whispered. “Always.”
She laughed softly, tears still wet on her cheeks.

He woke up with a smile on his face.
The smell of sweat and sex still lingered in the air around them.
He doesn't care. All he needs is her scent, wrapping around his mind, taking him to places only she could.
One of his hands searched for her on the mattress, his eyes still closed, and when it didn't find her, he sat up abruptly.
Layla gasped, dropping the pencil in her hands, sitting farther from him and doodling something in her sketch pad.
He immediately pulled her closer. "I am fucking replace this bed with a couch." He muttered.
Layla laughed, kissing his tensed jaw. "Easy, caveman. I was just busy and didn't realise I went too far away from you."
Zaley frowned. "What were you busy with in the middle of the night?"
"My wedding dress."
"I thought our wedding was over," he drawled, tucking her in his arms and pressing a kiss against her neck.
"Don't let my daughters hear you say that. I changed my mind."
"Of course, you did." He is not at all surprised.
I want the biggest wedding, Leon. I want a ridiculous white dress, flowers everywhere, and all my friends and family. I want them all to see what we built. What we survived.”
He smirked, brushing a stray curl from her face. “Of course you do.”
“And you’ll give it to me,” she said firmly, like a challenge.
His lips curved into that dangerous, amused grin she could never resist. “I’ll give you everything.”