“Rebecca, would you please come up here?”
I smiled as everyone clapped and cheered me on. I felt myself walking slowly toward the stage, keeping my eyes on Marcus the entire time. Why did he have up his sleeve? Was he going to expose us?! Come clean in some final act of contrition to prove he’d actually developed a conscience over the last few weeks?
Thoughts raced half-formed through my mind as I came to a stop beside him. He wouldn’t do that to me, would he? I stared anxiously into those ocean eyes. Eyes that, for the first time, looked almost as anxious as mine.
Marcus sank down onto one knee, hand reaching around in his pocket.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
My voice came out quick and low, and for a moment, there were no pretenses between us. He flashed me his signature smile.
He stared deeply into my eyes and said, “Rebecca, you know me better than anyone else in this world, yet you still you manage to love me. You are my best friend, my one true love. I’ll never forget the moment we first made eye contact in that little coffee shop. The chemistry was explosive and powerful, far deeper and inexplicably beyond any calculation of time and place. I can’t even describe a feeling like that, and it is not something that can be replicated or forced. It just flows in us, around us, and we go where it takes us. It is that feeling that has brought us here, together, today in the Caribbean. You stole my heart that day at the coffee shop, and I want you to keep it forever.”
Numb with disbelief, I just stared at him.
He slid a glittering diamond ring on my finger. “Rebecca White...will you marry me?”
Oh, that son of a bitch!
To be continued...