The car shot past and the wind knocked into me and I stumbled backward into a solid body my hands touching something hard, it was someone's chest.
I looked up.
Tall. Dark. Looking down at me with an expression that made my heart do double jumps in few seconds I felt they would erupt, his hands were still on my arms making sure I was steady.
The driver leaned out his window, his voice bringing me out of my daze.
"Are you blind?" he shouted. "Watch where you're going!"
He drove off before I could respond.
The man holding me let go of me and I took a step back my body still reacting to his touch earlier, why was I insanely attracted to this man.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Fine," I said.
His eyes moved over my face once and said nothing.
"I've had a bad night," I said.
"I noticed."
I frowned.
"How did you notice?"
"I was at the Blackwell event tonight," he said. "I saw you."
I stared at him.
"I have a proposal for you," he said.
"A proposal," I repeated.
"Yes."
"You just pulled me off death’s door and now you have a proposal."
"That's correct, get in the car," he said.
I looked at him for a moment.
"I'm not getting in a car with a stranger," I said.
"You were just standing in the middle of the road ready to die."
"That's my business."
"It stopped being your business when I had to pull you out giving you a chance to live."
I had nothing to say to that so I said nothing.
"Get in the car," he said. "I'll explain on the way."
"No."
He didn't push. He just stood there, completely unbothered, and the rain that had been hanging in the air all evening finally made up its mind and started coming down.
He glanced up at the sky.
Then at me.
Then at my bags.
"Most people," he said, "find out who I am and get in the car immediately."
"I don't know who you are and I don’t care." I lied
"I know." He said.
"good because I'm still not getting in."
"You have nowhere to go," he said simply.
"You don't know that."
" you've been roaming on this street for hours," he said. "Where are you going?"
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
"They took everything from you tonight," he said. "Your boyfriend, your home, are you really going to let that be the end of it?"
I looked at him, has he been stalking me, but did it really matter at this point? He wasn’t lying I really needed help.
"What kind of proposal," I said looking at my feet.
"The kind that requires you to get in the car."
I picked up my bags with a sigh.
Not because I trusted him. Because I had two bags, no money, nowhere to go, and it was raining, and at least he had a face worth looking at. I was allowed to be practical.
I got in.
The car was warm and quiet and I sat with my bag on my lap and looked straight ahead and said nothing and he got in on the other side and started the engine and I felt him look at me.
I looked back.
He was staring.
"What," I said.
"Nothing," he said.
"You're staring at me."
"Am I."
"Is something on my face?"
He didn't answer. He just leaned toward me, and my heart started beating fast which was embarrassing because he was a stranger and I had literally just watched my boyfriend propose to my sister, but he was very close and I sat there and did not move and genuinely waited with my eyes closed, and then I heard a click and felt the seatbelt pulled across my chest and locked into place.
"Safety first," he said, and sat back.
I cleared my throat in embarrassment and looked out the window.
The rain picked up. He drove without music, I caught my reflection in the side mirror and looked away immediately because my mascara was everywhere and my hair was messy and I was wearing a dress a man had bought me so I could watch him propose to someone else, I looked like a patient that escaped an asylum, which man would kiss such an ugly sight.
"You still haven't told me your name," I said, after a while.
"No," he said.
"Are you going to?"
"When we get there."
I looked at him.
"Where is there?"
He didn't answer, and I was too tired to push, so I went back to looking out the window, and he drove, and the city moved past in the rain, and slowly the buildings got bigger and further apart and the streets got quieter, and then we turned through a gate and up a long driveway and at the end of it was the kind of house that made you forget what you were about to say.
"Is that a mansion," I said.
"Yes," he said.
"You live there."
"Yes."
He parked and we got out and a man in his middle age was already at the front door before we reached the steps, and we walked into a foyer that was bigger than every room in my house put together, and I stood in the middle of it in my damp dress with my bags and looked at the stranger who had brought me here.
"Okay," I said. "What do you want."
He looked at me for a moment, and then he closed some of the space between us, just enough, and said looking into my eyes, his voice deeper than earlier it brought tingles to my stomach, "Be my wife."
