Page 92 of Overtime
“Oh my god, Colt. It’s gorgeous. Huge but gorgeous.” She pulls the ring out and slips it on her left ring finger.
“Figure it’s not a true engagement party if you don’t have the engagement ring yet. I know we were looking, but I saw this one, and I knew. It was like the house, you know?” I’m hoping she likes it because it was incredibly hard to get.
“I love it. What is it? An emerald?”
Harper, Violet, Scarlett, and Mackenzie all flock over to look at it, oohing and ahhing over it once they realize what’s happening.
“Demantoid garnet.”
“Oh shit,” Harper gasps.
“What? Is that good or bad? Demented what?” Joss looks up.
Harper laughs and tilts Joss’s hand, so she can see the reflection of the light in the gem. She looks back at me and raises her brows. “I can’t tell. Horsetail?” she asks.
I nod.
“Damn. Your guy really loves you.”
“I mean yes, but why do you say that?”
“Because this is incredibly rare. It’s a rare gem, period, and this kind here is usually only mined in a very specific part of the Ural Mountains, mostly in the nineteenth century. They were popular among the aristocracy because of how hard they are to get. One this size… had to have been up on an auction block,” Harper’s eyes drift back to me and I nod again. “This is like an impossible get. I don’t even know how he found one so quickly. Jewelry like this comes up so rarely. They’re usually heirlooms that only go up if there’s an estate being divided.”
Joss tilts it and then looks over at me, suspicion in her eyes. “Because he didn’t just get it. Did you?”
I shrug. I’m not prepared to admit all this in front of a room full of people.
“You said you didn’t have a ring.”
“No, I said I didn’t havethering. I had a ring—one that needed to be reset into a band and setting that was right for its owner.”
“Colton St. George!” She starts to cry then, tears falling down her cheeks.
I close the distance the women have put between us while they were admiring the ring. I wrap my arms around her, smiling and kissing her before she buries her face in my shirt, little sobs choking her as she tightens her grip on me. Everyone takes a few steps back, letting us have a moment.
“Don’t cry. It’s not that serious.”
“It is that serious. How long have you had it?”
“For a while, Dollface. You know—this universe or another one I was going to have you, and I needed the rare one that matched your eyes when I got the chance.”
* * *
As the partywinds down and people are starting to leave, Joss is curled up on my lap on the couch half asleep. Ben and Violet are ushering out the last of the guests, and Harper and Scarlett are busy chatting in the opposite corner of the room.
“You ready to start heading home?” I whisper, brushing her hair out of her face and sweeping some of the green glitter from her costume off her cheek.
She yawns softly. “Yeah, we can. Just let me summon the energy to get to the car. You sure you’re awake enough to drive? I’m sure Violet won’t care if we stay here.”
“I’m sure.” I kiss her again and she leans into me.
I want her at home in our bed tonight. As much as I’ve loved sharing tonight with everyone, I want to end it with her curled up next to me in our bed at our place. Because this is the happiest I’ve been in a long time.
“Jesus Christ,” Alex bursts in through the door to the deck, where he’d just been taking a phone call.
“What?” I ask, my heart stopping when I see his face, and everyone in the room looks up.
“That was the hospital. Tobias didn’t make it here tonight because he was in a motorcycle accident. They didn’t have details, but it sounds bad. I’ve got to get down there. I’m his emergency person and fuck…They need someone down there to make decisions, call his family… ” Alex runs a hand through his hair as his face twists with anxiety.
