"We're not going far."

"That's what you said yesterday," Katherine raggedly replies. It's mile five of their ten mile run. Why Charlie thought this was a good idea is beyond her, but he's "been training."

Even she didn't go on runs this long. Maybe five miles, tops. 

"And we were half an hour late for dinner," Katherine continues.

Charlie manages a smile. "I promise we'll be in time for the party. We've got plenty of time." He breathes easily through his nose. "How come you're so out of shape?" He taunts. Katherine cuts her eyes at him.

"I'm a time runner," she pants. "Not distance. Ten miles, Charlie? Really?"

"We're almost to the resting spot," he promises. "Five minutes, tops." 

So she pushes on. She's only a little tired, really, but the sun is beating down, even with them running mostly in the shade. 

Besides. If Charlie and his bad knee can take ten miles, she should can it. How often does she get to do stuff like this with him?

They'd be leaving in a few days for God-knows-what-job, God-knows-where.

Can it.

They're on some secluded dirt path by the lake. It's probably private property...more than likely, considering this is the only house they've passed in a quarter of a mile. 

"Would you actually consider this a lake?" Katherine asks, glancing over the hills at the glisatening water. "Or, like, a really big pond?"

Charlie grins, his eyes following hers. "It's definitely a lake."

She squints at him. "Why, though?"

"Because a lake is bigger than an acre."

Katherine frowns at the water, putting her hands on her hips. "Oh."

Charlie laughs a little. "Come on. We're almost there."

"Almost where?" She asks, quickening her pace to a jog. "And how do you know?"

"I just know. You're asking a lot of questions."

"You're being weird."

"I am not!" Charlie cries. 

"I don't even know how you mapped this run out," Katherine pants. "And memorized it."

"I've been doing it every day for a couple months now."

"Oh," she puffs. "You never told me that."

Charlie's brows knit together as he glances at her. "Didn't I?"

She's quiet for another dozen or so yards. That's when a white two-story house with gray accents comes into view. 

"Oh, wow," she pants. "That's a pretty house."

Charlie beams at her. "Think so?" Katherine nods. "Let's go take a look." He sprints up the pale paver driveway. Katherine's brows wrinkle, and she comes to a stop.

"What? Charlie!" She glances on either side of the dirt path. "Charlie, you can't just run up to people's houses!" 

He runs right over the large, square-stoned pathway, tip-toeing like a thrilled toddler, all the way up to the two-paneled wood-and-glass front door. Katherine anxiously adjusts the ballcap on her head and runs after him. 

The grass looks like it was laid down recently. She can still see the lines between the pallets. The grass looks nice, though. Lush and green. A gray bed of rocks, ground-covering flowers and shrubs line the edge of the house. Katherine passes a one-car garage with a wooden door. 

The patio is vacant, bare concrete, and seems to wrap around the side of the house without the garage. Most of the walls are some kind of off-white and the accenting wall she's passing—one with a giant window—is dark blue-gray, along with the front columns of the house. 

Charlie sticks a key into the French door and pushes one of the panels open. Katherine stops on the steps up the porch.

Charlie grins at her, standing off to the side of the doorway. She glances to the swinging door. Back to him.

"What?"

"C'mere." She walks to him unsurely, glancing back into the doorway like people will appear at any moment. 

"Did you just...unlock the door?"

"Yeah." She lets herself get swept up into his arms. He carries her across the threshold and sets her down before closing the door behind her. 

Sunlight streams in from everywhere, gives a new dimension to the hardwood floors. Her eyes focus onn the odd shininess of the floor.

"Is that wood?"

"Wood-look. It's tile. Kind of a new thing. Way better than linoleum."

Katherine scoffs. "I'll say." She takes a tentative step forward. 

"Go look around," he hums. 

Everything looks so...open. And it is open-concept, but...she doesn't know what to call the spaces. Right in front of her might be the great-room, living room, whatever. Wooden beams run across the ceiling.

"That's actually styrofoam," Charlie says with a grin. "It's just painted to look like wood. Cool, right?"

There's a huge pane of glass in the middle of the back wall that opens up to the lake. Giant sliding glass doors give way to a spacious patio. Charlie showed her the remote that brings down the screen. There's a small swimming pool, a yard of green grass that rolls to the lake, a fence with a gate that opens up to the little dock.

She moves to the staircase on the right. The handrail is barred, the same blue-gray color as the outside accent. There are three bedrooms up here, two bathrooms.

"I always thought this one was the nursery," Charlie says, leaning against the doorway.

This room is the smallest, but it isn't small. It's comfortable. There's a rectangular window facing east, a little sitting-bench underneath it. What do they call those seats?

Charlie can't read her face, especially with the navy blue visor of her ballcap covering her eyes. She's been relatively quiet the whole way through the house, and he just follows her a few paces away. Letting her explore. 

She heads back downstairs and moves towards the west side of the house. The kitchen is on the way, overlooking the lake too. She only knows it's the kitchen from the island and the sink on the wall, the tall white cupboards.

The laundry room is the first closed-doored room she's seen so far, just offshooting the kitchen. It's long but not too narrow, has the hookups for a washer and a dryer. Just across the way is another doored room.

"Master bedroom," Charlie says.

Katherine pushes down on the handle and gently nudges the door open. 

More windows. Wood-look tile. Massive bathroom. A long clawfoot tub sits in front of the huge window overlooking the lake. 

Views for days.

A counter on either side of the bathroom, each with a large square mirror, several overhead lights. A deep sink basin, black fixtures, old-fashioned double-cross knobs. Katherine mindlessly spins them. 

No water comes out.

There's another door in the bathroom. Narrow. Katherine opens it and flips on the light. 

To her left is what looks like storage. Shelves built into the wall. Everything else is giant. square. closet. 

Charlie is waiting wordlessly in the bathroom doorway. The ring box in his pocket feels like it's poking out. Glaringly obvious. 

Katherine moves to stand beside him. He can finally see her eyes. Glittering sapphires, ringed with gray. A little smile that threatens to pull at the corners of her lips.

Does she know what's going on, or is she having a heatstroke? She's too quiet. Charlie ran this scenario in his head a hundred times. She was never quiet in them.

"I thought we could put our bed right here," Charlie quietly tells her, gesturing to the wall between the bathroom and sliding glass door. He points to it. "That leads to the porch...we can sit out there, have our coffee before heading off to work." Katherine's gaze turns tender as she looks at him. He thinks he sees tears welling in her eyes. "Watch a little bit of the sunrise, then after dinner watch the sunset."

"Our bed?" She whispers. 

Charlie nods, swallowing the lump that has thickened over his windpipe. "This is our house."

"What?" She laughs a little, tears slipping from the corners of her eyes.

"Do you like it?"

Katheirne laughs again, looking to the sliding glass doors. "Charlie, I love it!" Another laugh. Happy. So, so happy. Relief lifts his heart.

"What did you think we were doing here?" 

"I don't know," she admits, wiping her face. "I don't know, but I was thinking about how much I loved every part of this place." Katherine sniffs and looks up at him. "Our house?!"

"Yeah," Charlie beams. "I had it built for you."

"You what?!"

"Do you know how hard it was keeping this a secret from you?" He breathes. "Telling the guys to keep their mouths shut."

"They know?"

"They're the ones who built it." Charlie grins. "I managed to swing a deal with our coordinator. Big job one week, this place the next." 

Katherine's grin is wide, her cheeks are high and pink. "I can't believe you did this for me," she whispers.

Why?

"I've got one more thing I want to show you." 

He leads her back into the main room. In the fireplace is a stack of paper and a pen. 

"What's this?" Katherine asks, kneeling in front of the hearth. 

"The deed," he says. "I, uh...I didn't want you to be on the initial paperwork. I wanted it all to be a surprise."

"How did you afford this place, Charlie? The stove, the oven..." She glances to the kitchen with the built-in appliances. "The fucking noodle arm."

Charlie laughs. "I managed my investments well. My dad got me into stocks when I was in school...saved extra housing money I got while I played ball, put it in a bunch of different places." He shrugs. "It pays when your old man is in finances."

Katherine breathes out a laugh and looks down at the paperwork.

"You sign that, this place is yours, too." 

It's not just the house. It's her whole life. This is the fork in the road. 

Charlie or Dean.

Charlie, who pulled her from the darkest place in her life. Who breathed life into her after Dean left her on the side of the road. Figuratively. And even though she understands why, there's a part of her that has never forgiven him for it. For...for letting her give that part of herself over if he was just going to crush her in the end. And maybe she didn't forgive herself, either. 

Dean has let her down more times than she's willing to count. She's probably forgotten most of them by now. 

Katherine picks up the pen and begins to sign the first line.

Charlie has always showed up. Charlie...Charlie picked her up. Cherished her. Built a house for her. Charlie made her soup when she was sick, and sent flowers to her office every Monday, and never raised his voice at her, and made everything an adventure, and asked what she thought of things, and emailed her throughout the day just to say "I love you," and did love her inspite of all the things he knows about her and all the things he doesn't yet. That he would. 

Charlie is on one knee at her side, fishing for the ring box in his left pocket as she flips the pages and signs. Charlie's heart is throbbing in his chest. 

Katherine sets the pen down and looks to her right with a grin. She made her choice. She'd make it again and again and—

That grin falls, and tears are in her eyes, and she can't breathe because Charlie has a ring and he looks so scared.

More scared than when he picked up that stupid not-penny and was haunted by a ghost for a day. More scared than when she and Charlie had to take Julien to the emergency room for a fever while Chris and Sophia were out of town. More scared...More scared than she was when she realized she loved him.

"Katherine Donovan," Charlie whispers. "Two weeks after meeting you, I called you at three in the morning and you picked up on the second ring. And I probably shouldn't be saying this when I'm asking you to marry me, but I went on, like, four dates after I met you and...and none of them picked up at three in the morning. 

"I knew then that...that you're the person I've been waiting for. The person I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life with. Because I don't know what you were doing at three in the morning on a Thursday...Friday, technically...but you sounded exhausted, and you picked up the phone, and you came to get me from that dusty ass bar, and we sat in your car and talked until the sun came up. There hasn't been an hour of my life since then that I haven't thought of you.

"I love you. I love your honesty, and your drive, and your loyalty...even to people who have wronged you. I love that I can tell you anything. I love your humor...as fucked up or un-funny your jokes may be. I love how you nerd out on the weirdest things...I love how you keep me on my toes. I love every part of you. The...the sweet and kind and thoughtful, the erratic and forgetful...the mean and ugly...I have no fucking clue how we're going to make this work, but...but we have so far...so what's the rest of our lives?" Charlie's brown eyes are brimming with tears, but his smooth voice hasn't wavered a bit. Those eyes haven't left her face. "Can I be your three A.M.?" Charlie swallows thickly. His jaw flexes. "Will you marry me?"

He means everything he said. 

He wasn't expecting her to give up hunting. I don't know how we're going to make this work...

Maybe...maybe she would. She could see it. 

Her mouth isn't working, but her head is nodding so fast it doesn't even matter.

She hasn't even looked at the ring until it's on her finger. It's a pear-shaped diamond sat atop a thin gold pavé band. Delicate. Timeless. Beautiful. Perfect. 

It's mine?

"Are you kidding?" Katherine sobs. 

"No," Charlie laughs. "No, I'm not kidding!" He holds her face, grinning from ear to ear. She claws her way to him, arms fastening around his neck as she cries. The tears are happy.

Mostly.

She's never been more sure of anything in her life. Of Charlie. She's never been so excited.

But she can't let go of Dean. She can't stop mourning the man she first really loved. Her first almost-everything. He pissed her off. He challenged her. He's hard. He is everything Charlie isn't.

And he'll be dead in a year.

KARLIE HOUSE INSPO

HOW FUCKING GORG IS THIS

ugh i love