Our eyes locked for a split second, before Aleksandr spun around and yanked his shirt off. Without thinking, I reached out and brushed the words scrawled across his shoulders with my fingertips. At my touch, his head jerked to the side, and a ripple coursed through his muscles.

“ ‘How well you live makes a difference, not how long,’ ” he translated, and dropped his shirt to the floor before turning to face me.

I ignored the desire to spin him around and trace the words with my tongue and spoke instead. “Your parents would be proud of you. You’re living pretty well right now.”

“I didn’t get that for my parents. I got it two weeks ago, when I started planning this with Greg. There is no living well without you, Audushka. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t care that I made it to the NHL. I didn’t care about scoring, about winning, about hockey. Being without you was like my parents’ death all over again. Life sucks when there’s no one you care about to share it with. You’re all that I have.”

The hem of my maroon Central State football T-shirt was sweaty and dirty, but I pulled it up and dabbed at the tears building in my eyes anyway. They were probably already racooned-out from crying off my eyeliner while he sang.

“Not true. You have your family in Russia. You have your friends and teammates and coaches. You even have my grandparents,” I added.

“But you are the only one who matters. I need to know if I have the most important person.”

As someone whose identity was created around a father who never wanted to know her, and a mother who was killed before she was seven years old, it would be an impossible task for me to let go of everything in a minute, or a month, or even six months. But I had to get over my trust issues, or let Aleksandr go for good. If I couldn’t trust him what kind of life could we have together?

Aleksandr was the one person I couldn’t hide from or filter myself around. The person who called me out on my bullshit and persuaded me to open up. He was the person who taught me that not everyone would abandon me, and I didn’t have to abandon others.

Despite the insecurities muddling my brain like a three-year-old’s finger painting, there was no hesitation in my answer.

“Yes.”

Epilogue

“Show me your school, Audushka.” Aleksandr opened the passenger door of his Jeep and took a step back so I had room to exit.

“Really?” I glanced at him to make sure he wasn’t teasing me before I jumped out.

He nodded. “I’ve never been to college.”

“I’ll take you to my favorite place.” After he’d helped me climb out of the Jeep, I laced my fingers with his and led him up the path toward Wagner Hall, my favorite building on campus. It felt surreal to have him walking around campus with me, as if we were in a parallel universe. A perfect universe.

“It’s beautiful here,” Aleksandr said as we followed the concrete trail among the perfectly manicured grass.

“It is, yeah. I love it.” I loved every inch of Central State’s campus. The charming brick buildings, the massive, mature trees, the meticulous maroon and gold flowers outside every building.

I was lost in thought of the understated beauty I took for granted every day, when Aleksandr suddenly yanked me toward a tree in front of Wagner Hall. Squeezing my hand, he dropped to one knee and dug in his pocket with his free hand. I glanced around, then back at him.

He wasn’t.

No.

He couldn’t.

“Auden Catherine Berezin, will you marry me?” The cool, confident man formerly known as “Douche Bag, King of All Douches,” shook as he thrust an open black box at me. When I peered into it, I saw not one but two rings: a silver ring with a single diamond twinkling up at me and a gold band.

Everything stopped. People stopped walking, birds stopped singing, cars stopped whizzing by on the road. The world stopped turning with Aleksandr on his knee, holding his life out to me.

“I, no, I still have a year of school and I’m already planning my master’s degree…and…and you’re in Charlotte,” I stammered, wiping sweat off an eyebrow, though the temperature had barely reached sixty-five degrees.

Aleksandr squeezed my hand, a jolt of electricity zapping through my veins from his simple touch. “I’m not rushing you, Audushka. You can finish school here and find a master’s program in Charlotte. Or stay here for your program. It doesn’t matter. We’ll make it work. You and me forever. I want this. No excuses. No pushing me away. No more walls.”

No excuses. No walls? That I couldn’t guarantee. We’d only known each other for six months. That was scary. That was barely out of the honeymoon stage. But I guess we never had a honeymoon stage with both of us laying all our cards on the table from day one.

When I was a little girl, I never yearned for the fairy tale love of the Cinderellas and Snow Whites. I craved the flawed, consuming, passionate, obsessive, can’t-live-without-you, eternal love of poets and playwrights. I wanted the Karenina and Vronsky kind of love. Because life isn’t glass slippers and balls. It’s jealousy and imperfection and forgiveness. Despite everything in my past, or maybe because of everything, I truly believed Aleksandr loved me.

“I think Charlotte needs a Central Club branch, don’t you?” Aleksandr’s voice filled the air, and I met his eyes. He always knew exactly what to say.

The world started again as I pushed negative thoughts away with a shake of my head.

“Yeah. Yes. Of course I will,” I told him, pulling him up. I brushed my lips against his lips.

He wrapped his arms around me, and I nuzzled into his chest. When he pulled back, his eyes were glassy. Or maybe they only looked that way because I was seeing him through the tears in my own eyes. His hands shook as he pushed the diamond ring up my left ring finger.

Aleksandr and I were engaged.

“What’s that one for?” I pointed to the thin gold band in the box. “Not trying to be greedy, just wondering.”

“We don’t give engagement rings in Russia. We wear bands on our right hands. This one was Mama’s. I, um, I wanted you to have it.” Tears slipped down Aleksandr’s cheeks, and my eyes widened. I burrowed myself into his chest.

“Sasha,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

“It sucks not to share this with them. I wish they could’ve known you.” He pulled away, wiping the wetness on his cheeks with his fingers.

“I know.”

He didn’t need to explain. I didn’t need to explain. It was Aleksandr and me. We already knew it all. His parents and my mom would miss every monumental occasion in our lives. Both of us had already figured that out, but it didn’t mean it hurt any less. Every time a huge event comes up, Aleksandr and I will both grieve for our parents again. Only now we wouldn’t be grieving alone, trying to hide it from others who didn’t understand. We had each other.

I held out my right hand, and he slid his mother’s ring onto my finger, rubbing the gold band with his thumb.

“I don’t want you to think we should do it like in Russia. I know traditions are different here. I just wanted you to have it.” He sniffed and wiped his face again. Had he ever looked so handsome as he did baring himself to me with watery eyes?

“What is it like there?”

“Go to the registry office, say yes to a couple of questions, and walk out married.”

“Well, I think we do that here, too.” I laughed. “At the courthouse. But we’d have to get a marriage license first.” I caught his eyes.

Did I just ask him to go to the courthouse with me?

“How do we do that?”

“Wanna run by the county clerk’s office and find out?”

Yep, definitely just asked him to go to the courthouse.

—

“Do you have your birth certificate?” I asked Aleksandr when the woman at the clerk’s desk told us we would both need them.

“Back at the hotel.”

“Translated?”