A/N: Originally planned to show family Thanksgiving but I'm skipping it for the sake of moving this story along. Thank you all for the kind words!

Friday, December 15

Despite the bitter cold, Jamie could feel his palms sweating inside his gloves as he and Eddie walked hand in hand. They'd gone out for dinner at a nice place, but not so nice that Eddie would get suspicious, and they followed with ice skating in Central Park—something she'd talked about doing all year long. He'd spent the whole week building her up, promising a big surprise on Friday night, and as far as she knew, the ice skating was it. She'd had a great time and now, ten minutes after leaving the rink, she was still chattering on about it.

Jamie was grateful for that, though. Her voice grounded him as the significance of the question he was about to ask threatened to blow him away.

She clung to his hand and tucked her shoulder behind his arm for warmth as her free hand animatedly punctuated her words. He was too distracted to fully process what she was saying, but he was pretty sure it had something to do with how long it had taken him to stop shuffling around the ice rink and actually get comfortable on his skates. But whatever—let her make fun. He had bigger things on his mind now.

Everything he'd prepared to say floated around his brain in mismatched pieces and he began to fear that he'd miss something or mess it up when the moment came—if he survived that long without keeling over from the anxiety.

As they got closer and closer to the spot he'd picked, his pulse pounded in his ears so loudly that it actually drowned Eddie out. She urged him to walk faster so they could get out of the cold, and for a moment the panic almost overwhelmed him as he imagined her pulling him right past his stopping point without giving him the chance.

But that didn't happen. He tightened his grip on her hand and managed to keep her in stride with him.

A hundred more feet.

A quick visual check confirmed that his secret photographer, a friend from the precinct who owned a fancy camera, was in place on a bench a little ways past them.

Now.

He gently tugged her arm to stop her under the brightness of a lamppost and he pivoted to face her without letting go of her hand.

"What?" she asked, a small confused frown on her face. "It's freezing, Jam—"

She stopped short and clapped her palm against her mouth when he dropped down to one knee, reaching his free hand into his pocket to grab the ring.

"Eddie," he started, but his voice shook a little and he took a deep breath to steady himself. "Edit Marie Janko."

Her eyes narrowed the slightest bit at his use of her full name, but that didn't dim the twinkle he saw there, full of excitement and hope and possibility.

"You—you drive me crazy. You have since that first night I met you outside the Twelfth."

Crap—where was he going with this? He couldn't remember. He took another deep breath and looked up at her face, illuminated by the streetlamps and the Christmas lights, and he knew he'd never seen anyone more beautiful. Nobody else even compared.

He forced himself to keep talking, though now he wasn't sure where the words were coming from. Everything he'd prepared—gone.

"But it's a good thing," he managed. "You make life so—so awesome. You're determined and stubborn and demanding and passionate and you turn me into a better version of myself just by hanging around me. I love you so, so, so much."

Her eyes glowed even more—maybe, he thought, with tears.

"I was the luckiest cop in the city, being your partner for three and a half years, and for the last nine months I've been the luckiest man in the world, because I've gotten to wake up to your grumpy morning self every day."

She let out a small sob of a laugh at that and let go of his hand to nudge his shoulder. Her other hand stayed glued to her face.

"And I want to wake up to your grumpy morning self every single day for the rest of our lives."

Eddie closed her eyes, an extended blink, and took a deep breath. He paused to let her regain some composure and dig for some himself, continuing only when she met his gaze again.

"So—Eddie, will you marry me?"

She couldn't speak, so she just nodded vigorously and pulled at his arm until he stood so she could throw herself at him. He started to fumble with the ring box but gave up to squeeze her with both arms, lifting her off the ground as she buried her face in his shoulder. Finally her feet found the sidewalk again and she leaned back to offer him a watery smile before diving at his lips.

Her kiss was salty from her tears, but Jamie couldn't have cared less. After a minute, though, he pulled back and reached up to wipe her cheeks with his thumbs. And his eyes fell on the small black box in his left hand.

"The ring," he said dumbly, holding it up. He opened it in the tight space between their chests and their foreheads met as they looked down at it. He angled himself slightly so the light fell on the ring and she gasped, her hands flying up to her face again.

"Oh my God, Jamie," she breathed. "It's gorgeous."

He smiled and yanked off one of his gloves with his teeth before reaching for her left hand to work her glove off too. "The diamonds are from my mom's engagement ring," he explained. "She would've loved you. She would've wanted you to have it."

She giggled at his unsuccessful attempt to slide the ring onto her hand. Finally he groaned in happy frustration and ripped off his remaining glove so he could use both hands.

"Damn," she said, holding her hand up once the ring was finally on. "I would've painted my nails if I knew I'd have a reason to stare at my hand like this."

Jamie laughed loudly—the pressure was finally off and he could relax and holy shit he was engaged to Eddie and the elation welling up in his chest was stronger than any version of happiness he'd ever felt before. He held her glove open and pushed it towards her hand. "It's freezing," he wheezed.

She grabbed it from him and shoved it into her coat pocket. "All of a sudden I'm actually perfectly warm."

"Speak for yourself," he chuckled, hugging himself.

"I can share." She grabbed his bare hands and kissed them before folding them in hers and rising up on tiptoes to kiss him again.

After another long moment their lips parted, though they stayed close enough that their clouds of breath still intermingled. "I do have one thing to say, though," she whispered, her eyes giving away the smirk that her lips managed to hold back.

"Yeah?" Jamie said. "What's that?"

"Next time you ask a girl to marry you, maybe don't spend quite as much time on the grumpy morning thing."

His chest rumbled with another deep laugh. "Next time? There won't be any next time. You're it, babe."

Their hands found each other again and they wordlessly turned to keep walking. Out of the corner of his eye Jamie saw the photographer slink away. Eddie hadn't noticed her at all, apparently, so the pictures would be another surprise for her over the weekend.

"For the record, though," he said. "I had a whole thing prepared. Seriously, a whole thing. It was going to take, like, four or five minutes for me to get through it all, on and on about every single thing I love about you, how you make life worth living, blah, blah, blah. But—yeah, I sort of blanked. I think you got the highlights, though."

She threw her head back and laughed, high-pitched giggles that shook her shoulders, until her eyes brimmed with tears again. "I'm shocked," she finally managed. "You, Jameson Harvard Reagan, forgetting something you prepared? I can hardly believe it."

"It's true," he shrugged. "I swear, I had something a whole lot better than grumpy morning Eddie."

Eddie peered at him, eyebrows inching up towards her knit hat. "You gave an hour-long speech to two thousand people in California," she giggled, "and you were too nervous to remember five minutes of proposing to me?"

Jamie lifted his free hand up near his shoulder in a gesture of innocence. "Two reasons for that. One, you were there to keep me sane before that speech, but for this, what was I supposed to do? Hey, Eddie, I'm going to propose to you this weekend and I'm really nervous so can you help me calm down? No way. Two, there was a lot more riding on tonight than on that stupid work speech."

She accepted that answer and her lips quirked up into a closed smile. They were almost out of the park now, and Jamie's car was visible a short distance down the street.

"Wow," she sighed again. "We're getting married."

"Yep."

"When?"

"I'd tie the knot tomorrow if Erin wouldn't kill me for depriving her a wedding."

"Ha. It would definitely make things easier, logistically. No planning, no waiting…"

"What? You mean you haven't had every detail of your wedding planned out since you were eight?" He let go of her hand to open the car door for her. "Eddie Janko, I am completely shocked."

"God, no," she scoffed as she climbed into the seat. "I have ideas about the food, but the wedding itself—never really thought about it. I bet my mom probably has, though. She's probably planned the whole damn—"

"What?" Jamie said, raising his eyebrows at her over the top of the door.

"Dammit, Reagan, we're getting married," she groaned, but the smile never left her face. "You know what that means? Ugh, I'm going to have to call my mom."