Chapter 265. His Second Attempt

The fireworks were a memory, a phantom scent of saltpeter on the breeze. The leftover torta sat between them, a silent witness to the chaos. They were still on the terrace, but the world had shrunk to the small circle of candlelight around them, the night now vast and quiet but for the rhythmic sigh of the waves far below.

Sabatine was wiping the last happy tears from her cheeks, her body still vibrating with the aftershocks of laughter. She held her left hand out, turning it this way and that, watching the dark sapphire drink in the candle flame and glimmer with a secret, subterranean fire. Every few seconds, a fresh, disbelieving giggle would escape her.

“I can’t believe you did it anyway,” she said, her voice rich with amusement. “Kneeling in the middle of an aerial bombardment. It was the most stubborn, romantic thing I’ve ever seen.”

Anton watched her, a soft, dazed smile on his own face. The grand, planned pressure was gone, replaced by a giddy, expansive relief. He’d done it. She’d said yes. The world was irrevocably changed. Yet, as he watched her marvel at the ring, a strange, quiet clarity settled over him. The fireworks had been a spectacular accident, a shared joke that would become part of their lore. But the question itself—the sacred, simple core of it—felt somehow… outsourced to the noise.

He wanted to hear it in the quiet. He needed to give it to her again, when the only soundtrack was their own hearts.

She was mid-sentence, recounting the look on his face when the first shell had exploded. “—and you, you just looked so offended, like the heavens themselves had committed a breach of contract—” She was laughing again, that beautiful, free, unraveling sound.

He reached across the table and took her hand, the one with the ring. His touch stopped her words. She looked at him, her eyes still sparkling with mirth, a question forming.

He didn’t stand up. He didn’t move from his chair. He just held her gaze, his thumb stroking the cool band of platinum and tungsten around her finger. The laughter in her face slowly faded, replaced by a flicker of curiosity at his sudden, profound stillness.

“Sabatine,” he said. His voice was low, but it carried in the quiet with the weight of a vow.

Her smile softened, but remained. “Yes?”

He took a breath, the air feeling new in his lungs. “Marry me.”

The words were the same. But everything else was different. No fireworks. No kneeling. No preamble. Just the two of them, at a candlelit table, the question laid bare in the space between their entwined hands.

For a second, she didn’t understand. A faint, confused smile lingered. She glanced down at the ring on her finger, then back at him, as if to say, We just did this.

Then, it hit her.

This wasn’t a repeat. It wasn’t a formality. It was a reclamation. A deliberate, conscious offering of the same infinite promise, but this time in terms of pure, unadorned intimacy. He was asking her again, not because he doubted her first answer, but because he wanted her to have the memory of saying yes in the silence, too.

All the laughter, all the playful energy, drained from her face. Her expression went utterly blank with shock. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. The hand in his went perfectly still. She was frozen, not with fear or uncertainty, but with the overwhelming magnitude of the gesture. He gave her the proposal twice. Once in spectacular, shared chaos. Once in perfect, private peace.

He saw the realization bloom in her eyes—the understanding that this was his second attempt, not out of necessity, but out of a love so deep it wanted to consecrate the moment in every possible way.

Tears, different from the tears of laughter, welled up instantly, spilling over without a sound. They traced slow, luminous paths down her cheeks in the candlelight. She was staring at him as if seeing him for the first time, or the thousandth time, with a depth of feeling that rendered her speechless.

Anton held her gaze, his own eyes burning. He didn’t speak. He just waited, giving her the silence he had stolen back for them.

A full minute passed, marked only by the sea and the soft sputter of a candle wick. The world held its breath.

Finally, a shuddering breath broke from her. She swallowed hard, her throat working. When she spoke, her voice was a raw, broken whisper, more beautiful to him than any symphony.

“You…” she began, then stopped, shaking her head slightly as if words were impossible. She tried again. “You incredible man.” A sob escaped, but it was a sound of pure, undiluted joy. She pulled her hand from his only to cradle his face, her touch reverent. “Yes,” she breathed, the word a sacrament. “Yes, Anton. Yesterday. Today. During fireworks. In the quiet. A hundred times, yes.”

He leaned into her touch, closing his eyes for a moment, letting the purity of this second yes wash over him, healing the last, hidden fracture of his old self that had believed beautiful things had to be perfectly staged to be real.

When he opened his eyes, she was smiling again, but it was a new smile—tender, awe-struck, saturated with a love so profound it seemed to glow from within her.

“Two proposals in one night,” she whispered, her thumb tracing his lower lip. “I think you’re trying to set a record.”

“I just wanted to be sure you heard me,”he murmured, turning his head to kiss her palm.

“I heard you for the first time,”she said. “But this…” She looked around at the quiet terrace, the intimate candlelight, their joined hands. “This is the one I’ll remember when I’m ninety. The one where you asked me in the silence we built.”

He stood then, drawing her up with him. He didn’t kiss her. He simply folded her into his arms, holding her tightly against him, feeling the solid reality of the ring against his back where her hand rested. They stood like that for a long time, two silhouettes against the starry sky, the candlelight painting them in gold.

The interrupted proposal had been a glorious, shared joke. This, the second attempt, was their solemn, secret wedding. A vow exchanged not in front of anyone, but in the deepest chamber of their shared heart.

And as they finally broke apart, her eyes clear and shining, Anton knew with absolute certainty that he would spend the rest of his life trying to be worthy of the woman who had said yes to him twice in one night—once with laughter ringing in her ears, and once with a silence so profound it had echoed with forever.

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