The Best Next Thing

Stormy came trotting into the room and, momentarily diverted, Charity shifted her glance down to the dog, and then huffed an exasperated sigh.

“Now what? I thought she was done with this,” she groused. She moved out of Miles’s arms to kneel on the carpeted floor and call Stormy over. She made a tut-tutting sound and tugged at the random offering Stormy had dangling from her slobbering mouth.

“Ugh, so much drool,” she complained, as she investigated the mysterious object. Not sure what it was. She glared at Miles irritably. “In fact, next time you can retrieve whatever gross gift your dog decides to bri—Miles?”

He looked odd. Green around the gills and ashen around the mouth and…gray in the face. So many awful shades of hideous colors.

He swallowed thickly and his eyes bugged. Not an attractive look on him at all.

Confused…and more than a little alarmed, Charity pushed to her feet, her intention to touch test his forehead for fever. But when he collapsed to one knee, she gasped, terrified that he was seriously ill.

God! Where was her phone? She instinctively looked down at her hand. No that wasn’t her phone it was the thing Stormy had brou—she peered more closely at the item in her hand.

It was a box.

Breathing became the hardest thing in the world. A chore. An impossibility.

She swayed, feeling light-headed as she continued to stare at the beribboned box.

Miles was still on the floor. He could have passed out by now, she wouldn’t know. So focused was she on that box.

She slid the ribbon off, wrinkling her nose at how wet it was…Stormy had carried the box by the ribbon. She exhaled slowly and flipped the lid up.

And then covered her mouth with her free hand as she stared at the stunning, oval, flawless sapphire in awe. The stone was flanked by two smaller diamonds and set on a slender white gold band.

Her confused gaze leaped to Miles’s. He was still on the floor. On bended knee. Dressed in a pair of loose gray sweatpants, barefoot, bare chested, with dark stubble blooming on his jaw and lean cheeks, and his short black hair mussed.

He was, and always would be, the most beautiful man she had ever known.

“Charity Ella Cole, I love you more than anything else in this whole damned world. You’re my best friend and having you in my life is—quite simply—the most wonderful thing to ever happen to me. I can’t imagine being without you. I want to spend forever with you, I want to have children with you. And you would make me the happiest man alive if you wanted those things too. Will you marry me?”

Her lips trembled and her eyes were misty with the tears already streaming down her cheeks.

She knelt beside him and threw her arms around his neck, unbalancing him and sending them both to toppling to the floor. Delighted with this awesome new game, Stormy barked and leaped on top of both of them, licking every surface of available skin she could reach.

They convulsed with laughter, trying to push the dog off, but Stormy seemed to think it was part of the game and redoubled her efforts. They were a crazy tangled mess of limbs, hair, and fur and—in the midst of all that happy chaos—Charity said yes.