The word Beautiful still echoed in her chest.
The park around them softened, the grass and trees turning to watercolor. She felt the warmth of his hand on her thigh, the weight of it steady through the denim, the cool edge of the triquetra ring brushing her skin when his thumb moved.
Then the world sighed and loosened.
It did not break.
It melted.
Color pooled and slid away, and she was no longer on the blanket. She did not feel herself move. She simply found herself somewhere else, as if she had closed her eyes for a heartbeat and opened them in another moment of the same story.
A streetlamp glowed overhead, its circle of light blurring at the edges. The air was cool on her cheeks. She felt him in front of her, close enough that she could feel his body heat in the narrow space between them.
His fingers brushed along her jaw. The touch was gentle, almost testing, yet there was nothing tentative in the way he held her there. The metal of his ring grazed her skin again, a cool contrast to the warmth of his hand.
Her breath caught.
She could not see his face clearly. It remained a suggestion more than an image, the shape of a mouth, the hint of a jaw, a smudge of shadow where his eyes should be. Yet she felt his focus on her, the way his attention wrapped around her, steady and sure.
The night drew in around them.
He leaned in, and her body already knew what would happen. There had been a first kiss once, and this felt like it, only her mind could not quite catch the details in time. She felt the soft press of his mouth against hers, the way his hands slid to frame her face, the faint scrape of stubble against her skin.
Heat unfurled inside her, low and insistent.
Matt had kissed her with sweetness, with the eagerness of youth and tenderness. This kiss carried something else. Not impatience, not aggression, but a deep, consuming certainty that she belonged exactly where she was, and that he knew it as well as she did.
The scene blurred at the edges as her fingers curled in his shirt.
She did not see him pull away. One moment they were kissing, and the next the world rippled, as if someone had dragged their palm slowly through the water of her reality.
Light shifted.
Candles flickered somewhere in front of her, their flames pulling long and thin. She saw her own hands for a heartbeat, fingers trembling, and the glint of something bright resting in his palm.
A ring, hazy and without detail.
She did not see him drop to one knee, or hear a full speech. Instead, she felt the weight of his words in her chest, muted and distant, like the echo of something that had already been said long ago. There was a sense of quiet, of his voice low and sincere, of the fragile stillness in the air that always comes just before a life changes.
Her heart swelled, overwhelmed.
She felt herself say yes. The word did not reach her ears, but it rolled through her body like a release. Relief, joy, fear, hope, all braided together until she could not tell where one emotion ended and another began.
Warm metal slid over her left ring finger.
The ring settled against her skin, a perfect fit. Heat flared under it, spreading outward in a tight, bright band that made her chest ache.
The rest of the moment smeared into light and shadow. She saw his hands lifting hers, the blur of his head bending to kiss her knuckles, the glimmer of the triquetra ring on his right hand next to the new band on hers.
Then that scene dissolved too.
She stood before a full-length mirror.
Her image wavered in the glass, soft and unfocused. White silk clung to her body, the fabric spilling over her curves, the straps delicate on her shoulders. Her own face in the reflection was clearer than his, cheeks flushed, lips parted.
He appeared behind her, not with a sound but with a shift in the air and a wash of warmth at her back.
His arms slid around her waist, strong and confident, drawing her closer until her spine rested against his chest. His hands flattened over her stomach, fingers spreading in a way that felt possessive and protective all at once.
She saw their shapes in the mirror. Her in white. Him in shadow. His head lowered so that his mouth hovered just above her shoulder. Her body fit against his as if they had done this a thousand times before.
Heat shimmered in the room.
His lips touched the side of her neck. A slow, deliberate kiss. Her eyes fluttered closed in the reflection, her hand lifting to cover his where it rested over her. The ring on her finger caught the light. The triquetra on his flashed at the edge of her vision.
Beautiful, his voice murmured, not loud enough to echo, yet somehow filling the room.
Pleasure, love, belonging, the sharp ache of wanting to stay in that moment forever, all of it crashed through her like a wave.
Then the mirror blurred, and the lamp light streaked into smears.
The scene tipped again.
She rocked in a chair, though she could not remember sitting down. Soft light pooled on the floor and climbed the walls. The air around her was warm and still.
A small weight rested in her arms.
She looked down and saw only impressions. The curve of a tiny cheek pressed against her chest, the dark fuzz of hair, the small rise and fall of a baby's breathing. Her hand cupped the back of a delicate head. Her heart squeezed so tightly it hurt.
A baby girl. She didn't know how she knew, just that she had no doubt that the baby was a girl and theirs. She knew it without seeing her face. Knew it in the way her body responded, in the way her chest filled with a fierce, aching tenderness that left no room for anything else.
He was there too.
Kneeling beside the chair, his presence a steady anchor at her knee. His hand, large and warm, covered the tiny foot that peeked from the blanket. The triquetra ring gleamed at the edge of her sight again, that one sharp detail in a world of soft edges.
You did it, some part of her thought, or remembered him saying. You brought her here.
Joy swelled, fragile and immense.
The scene shifted once more.
Children laughed.
The sound came in bright bursts, high and unrestrained, ringing off some unseen set of walls. She stood outside, in a yard that felt familiar without being fully visible. The sky overhead was a sheet of pale blue.
Shapes moved ahead of her. Her son, older now, lanky and laughing, running after something she could not quite see. A smaller form stumbling on unsteady legs, chasing after him. A toddler girl, arms reaching, curls bouncing.
He was with them.
He moved through the blur, lifting the little girl into his arms while her son grabbed at his side. She could not pick out his features, yet the outline of his body, the way he bent to scoop them up, the tilt of his head when he laughed, all of it carved itself into her as surely as any clear image.
Laughter mixed together, rolling over her in waves.
He turned toward her for an instant.
She saw nothing but a dark outline against light, the glint of the silver ring on his hand as he shifted their daughter on his hip, the sense of a look that settled on her and held her firmly in place even from a distance.
Her chest filled with a love so thick and fierce that she almost could not breathe.
This is mine, something inside her whispered. This is ours.
Then even that began to blur, colors soaking into one another until all that was left was a swirl of sensation.
The warmth of his body at her back.
The rasp of his breath against her ear.
The faint scent of him, something clean and warm and male.
The weight of a child in her arms.
Her son's laughter.
The soft syllable of Beautiful whispered against her skin.
The images broke apart into feeling only, a mingled ache of love and longing and safety and fear and hope, too much to name and impossible to hold.
Slowly, gently, the dream began to let her go.
The warmth faded. The sounds quieted. The light softened until it was only a glow behind her closed eyes.
She drifted upward through the last echoes of that impossible life.