With Mary having just gone upstairs to get herself ready for dinner, Elijah raised himself from the place on the couch he'd been sitting in for the last forty-five minutes and made his way to the bedroom.

Madeline now had her necklace on full display, dipping to right between her cleavage. The long, red sweater dress fit her body perfectly, and Elijah didn't bother to restrain his stare. "I still can't believe you're mine," he admitted to her freely. "I couldn't believe it before, and I believe it even less right now. How did I get this damn lucky?"

She gave him a side eye as she dressed her smiling lips in a red hue. "You got your head out of your ass, I believe. Saved this damsel from an unhappy future with another, and you're insanely good looking, which doesn't hurt."

Elijah laughed as he rubbed at his mouth, then went to kneel beside her chair. "So, you don't hate the idea of getting married to me someday? Everyone I'm meeting these days is asking if I'm going to put a ring on that finger of yours."

He'd been asked that question by three different just at the one party. Either every relative he had was as mesmerized by her as he was, or his love for that woman was truly that obvious. Likely, it was a combination.

Madeline looked away from the mirror to meet his stare, only to flash him a cheeky grin. "It's good to know I'm not the only one getting that question. But to answer yours, no, I don't hate the idea of marrying you. But I want the relationship first. You and I were thrown under one roof by circumstance, but just because we're already living together doesn't mean I don't want a relationship before tying the knot."

Elijah let out a quiet laugh, scratched at his freshly shaved shit, then lowered himself to his knees beside her chair.

"Don't you dare, Elijah Martin," Madeline warned.

He wasn't proposing, though he imagined that's what it looked like. When Elijah proposed, he wanted it to be special, and beneath a star filled sky, because the universe that'd pulled them together deserved to be a part of that moment.

Although Elijah would watch her walk down the aisle toward him tomorrow, Madeline deserved a normal, happy, and healthy relationship. As far as he knew, the only person between her relationship with Johnny and her relationship with Martin Martin was him, and neither of those sounded like healthy relationships. Martin Martin held onto this resentment toward Elijah, who hadn't been in her life for years at that point, and attempted to punish her for caring for a man other than him. Johnny Boy proposed to her too fucking quickly, in his opinion, while he slept with at least one other person behind her back.

Their brief relationship two years prior was hardly a poster boy for healthy, either. Elijah depended on her from the start. Only she could provide him with a restful night's sleep. Only she could release him from the hell he lived in his nightmares. From the moment he opened his eyes in that room, she felt like his salvation. He felt the need to have her close from the start.

Although his love for Madeline never wavered, Elijah had learned to be independent. He'd been content in life without her. Maybe not altogether happy, but not nearly as restless as he'd once been. The right medications allowed him to rest peacefully through the night mostly. Not completely nightmare free, but not nearly as intense, and certainly not as frequent. And losing her, which he once thought of as his conscious hell, did eventually become his salvation.

He lost her because he feared his demons would taint her, as well as her image of him, but losing her forced those demons out, and eventually Elijah faced them once and for all.

Their first go-around, Elijah was practically waiting for it all to blow up in his face. He didn't believe something good could last. From the moment he had it, it was like he was waiting to lose it all. Nothing felt the same this time around. His love for her was stronger, as was he, and he was a very different person than the one who broke her heart. His primary concern when she entered his life once more was if he'd changed too much, no longer the boy who'd been her best friend, or the man she fell in love with. No longer anything to her.

Elijah cleared his throat, then reached for her hand, which she freely placed in his own. "Not proposing," he clarified before continuing, "just telling you how grateful I am that you gave me another chance. What we feel for each other is unavoidable, but you letting me back into your life in this way was. I would have taken care of you either way, and I think you know that. It would have been awkward after my confession, but we would have made it work.

"I broke a lot of promises to you, so it means everything that you were willing to let me in your heart again. As much as I want to marry you, I also want to do right by you this time around. I want to take you out on dates, buy you flowers, lay on the couch watching movies with you. I want to spend that quiet Christmas morning with you, cuddle up during snowstorms, celebrate our birthdays together. Everything I took away from us four years ago, I want now.

"I doubt I'll be able to last a full year before I propose, because I already feel like I've been waiting a lifetime, given our history, but I promise to resist for as long as I can, and be a proper boyfriend to you in the meantime."

A knock on the door to the bedroom sounded, stealing away their attention from one another. "Dinner reservation is in half an hour," Mary announced. "Time we get a move on!"

Madeline ignored the sound of her mother's voice and looked down at Elijah. "I know you have a lot of regrets about what happened before. So do I. But we aren't the same people we were four years ago, Elijah. Especially not you. The man you are now would never destroy me, because he's no longer hell bent on destroying himself. That's the difference.

"As much as I'm ready for our happily ever after, you're right. We need to take our time. Not just for the sake of dating, but for your sake. You took on so much by inviting me to stay with you. And you're taking on even more with your family. Your thoughts are going a million miles an hour, and you have everything coming at you all at once. You and I will always be here. We've proved that even at a distance.

"Right now, I need to focus on healing, and you need to focus on your family. In those in-between moments, we'll focus on each other, and once the dust settles, you can put a ring on it."