DAMIEN'S POV
The Sunday morning over pancakes when I'd asked badly and she'd said not yet and I'd spent a year counting days. I remembered it because I'd written the date in my phone calendar with no label, just a small marker I'd look at occasionally to remind myself where we'd started.
Elara didn't mention it. I didn't either. But I bought her a single sapphire earring to match the one she'd lost somewhere in the Portland gallery move, which she'd been quietly unhappy about for three months without making a production of it.
I left it on her coffee cup on a Sunday morning.
She picked it up and looked at it for a long moment.
"You noticed," she said.
"You checked the jewelry box twice a week."
"I wasn't obvious about it."
"You were a little obvious."
She put it on immediately, st
