pinky promise - jamie tartt

⌈ EPILOGUE ⌋

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"Thank you for dinner, baby."

"Are you kidding me? Love, we had to celebrate that match. You fucking killed it tonight." Jamie grinned at her quickly, navigating his car with one hand through the familiar streets of their neighborhood while his other rested on her leg. He squeezed her thigh for emphasis, and she set both her hands over his.

"I did kill it, didn't I?" Tate admitted. It had been Jamie's goal over the recent months to get her to recognize just how great of a player she actually was instead of brushing off compliments. A residual effect of her mother's childhood rejection of her playing sports, Dr. Fieldstone had explained to Tate during their fifth session together.

"Of course you did," Jamie's words were a little distracted, nervous, as he pulled into the driveway, and Tate would have questioned him about it, if she hadn't been distracted by the dozens of candles leading from the driveway and up the path to the front door.

"Jamie?" Tate's breath hitched in her throat as she spoke his name, a furrow in her brows as she watched him wordlessly climb out of the car and race over to her side, opening the door for her. She slipped her hand into his outstretched one, letting him help her out of the car with an anxious smile on his handsome face. "What's all this?"

"Just, hold on a second, yeah?" He sounded like he was out of breath, and it was enough to have her nodding slowly, letting him lead her by the hand up the candlelit path and into their house. The sight that greeted her inside knocked the wind from her lungs and had tears springing to her eyes.

Because every surface in both the living room and on the kitchen counter was absolutely covered in the soft glow of hundreds of candles and at least a dozen different bouquets of white lilies. They were spread all over, on the coffee table, shelves, and even simply on the floor. It was breathtaking, really, and Tate could hardly string together a thought.

"Jamie," Tate repeated his name, because it was all she could think to do. There was a path in the candles, leading directly to the center of the living room, and Tate paused there, letting the pad of her finger brush over the petal of a lily in a vase on the coffee table. "This is... how did you do all this?"

She turned to face Jamie, only to find him down on one knee behind her, a small velvet box in his hands.

In the movies, whenever the leading ladies were getting proposed to, they covered their mouths in shock, as if their whole story hadn't been leading to that very moment. And Tate had always thought that was a little cliché, like it was too storybook for it to actually be someone's first response to seeing the little ring box and their whole heart down on one knee. But with Jamie before her, she understood all those perfect film stars.

"Love," Jamie started, his voice a little shaky, and Tate could hardly keep herself from interrupting his no doubt well rehearsed speech. "Do you remember that first night when I drove you and Tommie home from the club, and we sat in me car outside your old apartment, and you told me that you wouldn't change a thing about me?"

All she could do was nod, because of course she remembered that night. She had thought about it for several sleepless weeks after, turning every part of the conversation over in her mind, trying to decide what she would've done different if Tommie hadn't been a mess and she wasn't dating Callum and she had loved herself just a bit more to recognize what she really deserved.

"That was the night I realized I loved you. That I had loved you a lot longer than I probably should have, considering I was a dickhead prick." Jamie admitted, and the contrast of the emotional moment and him referring to himself as a dickhead prick drew a soft laugh from her, the sound a little wet as she tried to keep herself from crying before he even actually said the words.