Annie was so scared she could hardly move. She was taking a big, big chance by confronting Chase like this. If it went wrong, she would be completely humiliated, but given how she’d been distancing herself from him, she figured she almost deserved that.
She followed Jackie and Richard to the back of the house and waited while they went outside. She could have gone around the side of the house straight to the pool area when she pulled up, but she’d wanted to do things the right way. Plus, trying the front door had bought her a few minutes to calm her nerves.
“Chase, you have a visitor,” Richard announced as he led the way.
When Chase looked up, Annie stepped outside. “Hi.”
He put his feet on the ground, but he didn’t say a word, just stared at her.
“We should go in,” Jason said.
Around the pool, everyone started to stand.
Annie stopped them. “I’d rather you didn’t. I think you all need to stay, if you don’t mind. I have something to say to Chase, and I’d like you all to hear it.”
“Okay. Then I guess we’ll stay.” Jason sat back down and waited.
Closing her eyes, she pulled in a breath. From somewhere, she found the strength to move closer to Chase. When she was almost near enough to touch him, she dropped to one knee and held out the flowers. They shook with a fine tremor she couldn’t control.
For the first time since she’d stepped out of the house, she felt that she had shocked him. A stillness came over him, and some of the anger and wariness left his eyes.
“I hurt you this last week. I’m so sorry. That was never my intention, but I was scared. That doesn’t make it right, but that’s the truth of it. After we left the hospital from seeing Katy, everything hit me, and I… I ran. No excuses. I ran to my mother.”
“I noticed.”
She winced. “I handled things badly. I’m so sorry, sorrier than I can even tell you.” She extended the flowers again, and his eyes dropped to them as though he expected them to turn to snakes and bite him. “Take them, please.”
He reluctantly accepted the bouquet. “They’re kind of puny.”
Her cheeks heated. “Well, I didn’t think about the flowers until I pulled up. I kind of pilfered them from the front of the house. Sorry, Jackie,” she said, not taking her eyes off Chase.
When Ethan choked off a laugh behind her, she saw Chase’s lips twitch—a tiny movement but a flicker of a smile no less.
“In any event, it’s supposed to be the thought that counts, right? Speaking of that thought, none of my growing silence this past week has been about you or us. It’s been about me. I needed be certain that what I was doing, what I was feeling, that it was right. That I wasn’t hurting you by being in your life. I had to accept myself before I could accept us. Do you understand?”
Carefully, Chase laid the flowers on the table beside him. “Don’t you think I should have been part of that decision?”
“Yes. But I’m a big chicken, and I didn’t know how to bring it up. Anyhow, I came here today to tell you that. And I wanted to tell you something else.” Her throat closed up, and she had to take some deep breaths in order to clear it. “God, this is so hard.”
“Just say it. Get it over with,” Chase said quietly.
From the way his eyes had shuttered, Annie realized he thought she was breaking up with him. “I love you. Okay? You make me so happy, and I don’t want to spend another day without you.” She fumbled with the watch-sized jewelry box in her hands and finally managed to get the thing open. She turned it toward him, throwing all her cards on the table. “Will you marry me, Richard Chase Hudson II? Share your life with me? And your sweet, crazy cat?”