Roan (The Henchmen MC 17)

Little did he know, that was rarely how it worked.

But he would see.

We all did eventually.

"Are you asking tonight?" Lo asked, nodding toward the box I had been opening and closing all day, constantly second-guessing my choice.

Mack didn't like a lot of jewelry. She hadn't even when she was young, pretty much only ever wearing a simple necklace, and calling it a day. She was still wearing the broken clock around her neck these days, refusing to let me get it fixed, telling me the brokenness was part of its story, part of our story. And, well, I couldn't argue with that.

There had been a lot of shattering.

And repairing took work, took dedication, took forcing yourself out of your self-imposed comfort zones.

But we had done it.

We continued to do it.

The work would never really be done.

But that was true of all couples, all relationships.

They took effort.

They took dedication.

Mack and me, yeah, we knew a lot about dedication. We had spent chunks of our lives on missions, steadfastly working toward a goal.

That was what we were doing now too.

Only this time, our missions were lined up, were the same.

"Yeah," I said, nodding.

It was a special day, almost seventeen years in the making.

I couldn't help but wonder if she realized it, or if she hadn't been quite as good at dates as I had been. In her memory, it had just been a day, one like many others until it wasn't.

In my memory, though, there were set dates. Because it had been planned out that way.

Today was the day we met.

Seventeen years ago.

It seemed fitting to do it today.

Especially considering I had been planning to ask her for her hand since, well, she agreed to give it a shot with me again.

It took inhuman self-control to hold off this long.

"Stop looking so nervous, she's going to say yes," Lo told me, smirking.

She would know.

Over the years, Mack had started working odd jobs with Lo - spending nights, long weekends up at Hailstorm trying to help them find someone.

She had gotten to know her pretty well in that time.

"She loves you," she added, giving me a smile. "Don't be nervous."

She was right, of course.

She loved me.

I loved her.

More so than fifteen years in the past, even though it had seemed impossible to love her more back then. There was simply more of her to love now. More parts, more stories, more depth.

Each time I thought that we had finally done it, told each other all our stories, one of us would remember something new, share it.

This was just a technicality, asking her to marry me.

We already loved each other.

We already lived together, shared a life.

We already grumbled about Sunday cleaning even though we had committed ourselves to it when we had got together. We still hemmed and hawed what to cook for dinner before, inevitably, ordering takeout since we had yet to manage to cook a single thing that we both liked eating.

She could cook fried eggs. I hated fried eggs.

I could only make scrambled. She hated scrambled.

I liked meat medium-rare, she always overcooked them. She liked them cooked almost well. I could never seem to get it right.

It was easier to order in.

Plus, we both decided a while back after drowning in a pile of them that seemed to never-endingly stack back up, ordering in meant fewer dishes.

It was just a question, just a symbol to offer her for what we already shared.

I was really just more nervous about the damn ring itself than the answer to the question.

Unfortunately for me, when she got together with the girls, she talked about martial arts, about past jobs, about current training, about jobs.

Never jewelry.

I knew.

I had asked every damn one of them what kind of ring they thought she would like.

Not a single one of them came up with an answer.

I knew the tradition was a diamond. Simple or elegant. But more socially conscious women who knew the horrors of the diamond trade would be happy with a ruby, sapphire, something less exploitative.

What I picked out wasn't only non-traditional. But it wasn't even like a cousin of tradition.

I worried sometimes that I underestimated Mack's desire to be girly.

That said, I had been living with her for a year and a half, and the girliest thing I had seen was a mud mask on her face.

So, hopefully, I was worrying over nothing.

I would find out soon anyway.Mack - 1.5 yearsHe was acting weird.

I always got an odd little thrill when I realized that. Sure, most women would likely feel sick to their stomach when they knew their man was acting out of character, sure he was having a mid-life crisis, engaging in an affair, secretly funneling their entire savings into a gambling addiction.

But I always found myself enjoying it.

Because it meant that I finally knew him better than he knew himself at times. That I could see through all his training, all the times he was taught how to evade or lie.