“If my mother couldn’t meet you, I thought you could still meet her.” He pulls out a 5 x 7 color photograph from inside and extends it to me.

I feel a visceral reaction to the image of the woman I see, and the handsome teenager standing beside her, letting her wrap her arm around him even though he’s already taller. I recognize him instantly.

How can I not? I love him to pieces. Every part of him. And I love that woman in the picture simply because of the smile she’s wearing and how lovingly she’s holding him.

“She was reckless, spent money like her life depended on it,” Malcolm tells me. “She was passionate, and brave, and she loved me. Despite everything.”

He reaches into the folder again, and this time takes out a box with the name Harry Winston on it. He snaps it open. And there’s this lovely, exquisite ring sitting proudly at its center. It’s a round stone, super classical.

“When I was born my father told her to go buy the biggest rock she could find to celebrate the birth of what could now only be their only son. She didn’t buy the biggest rock, she bought the most perfect: D, internally flawless, 4.01 carats. She took off her engagement ring and wore this ring for as long as I can remember. When her leukemia was diagnosed, she told me she wanted to give me this ring. This was symbolic to her for me, and she wanted my bride to have it. I told her there would be no bride, to keep it. When I . . .”

He pauses, his expression troubled by the memory.

“When I came back from my skiing trip with the guys, I was given a folder with that picture she kept on her nightstand. A trust fund. And this ring.”

As he lifts the ring, it refracts all the lights around us, sparkling rainbows.

“So I went to the bank, got it the biggest box I could find, and stored it, having no intention of ever opening that vault. But all I’ve been able to think of lately is getting this ring out of that vault . . .” He kisses my hand and slips it on. “And onto your finger.”

The ring slides easily onto my finger. It’s a little big, and suddenly my finger feels just as heavy as my chest. Sin surveys my adorned hand, then looks up at me with this hopeful, loving gleam in those eyes of his. Eyes that used to be cold, when I met him for the first time, now look at me with the heat at the core of the earth.

There’s a smile on his lips too, a smile so adorable it’s almost boyish.

“Tie the knot with me. Be safe with me. Reckless with me. Be who you are with me. Be my wife, Rachel—marry me.”

My eyes get blurry and my lips are trembling as I purse them painfully because of his story. Because I’m wearing a ring on my finger.

And he speaks: “You once told me you wanted the world to stand still, you wanted a safe spot to stand still. I want to be that place for you.” His hands are almost swallowing my face, but it’s his stare that swallows me most—swallows me whole. “Even if I’m spinning through life, the spot beside me will be the eye of the hurricane, and nothing there can be touched or harmed. I want you here with me, beside me.”

My breaths have become ragged and I’m shaking all over in disbelief and happiness and emotion.

“Have you wondered what a man in love looks like?” As confident as ever, he kneels, ducks his head and kisses my naked hand. “This is what he looks like.”

I break down and duck my face and bury it in his hair as a sob escapes me. I’m melting. Swooning. Dying. I should probably speak but I’m struggling with a wet face and a clogged throat. His mother. The only other woman this man has ever truly loved before me. I feel so grateful to hear about her. I feel so humbled that he thinks me worthy of wearing this ring.

Saint hears my sniffles and straightens back so he can dry my tears.

I love my mother so much; I can’t imagine how it must’ve hurt him to lose her.

“This . . .” I struggle to explain, “is what a woman in love looks like when the man she loves shows her he loves her too.”

There’s a deep texture in his voice when he lets out a breath and says, “She looks lovely.”

He starts to straighten and tucks his hands under my armpits. “What are you doing? What is—what are you—Malcolm!”

Laughing, he lifts me up to his eye level as he stands—lifts me up as if I weigh nothing—kisses me on the mouth. “What does she say?”

He waits a little, eyes searching, impatient, anxious, claiming, primal, male, Malcolm’s. “Rachel?” he prods softly.

I’m hyperventilating. “We never . . . we never . . . you never told me you wanted . . . you were thinking . . .”