Gone was the taste of toxin between the tip of Cristina's fingers, but the tension that had been building up in their apartment was enough to suffocate her.
Earlier that evening when she dragged her exhausted self home, Cristina's heart sank a little to find that Burke was not talking to her again.
Was Burke mad at her for not giving an answer? Otherwise, why didn't he wait for her at the hospital the way he did in the past eight days?
When she stepped out to make coffee, Burke silenced his eyes and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt, without looking at her.
When she brought her to the kitchen again for a snack, Burke rolled up his sleeves and stuck his chopsticks into the canton of noodles.
When she found herself standing behind Burke, yearning to rub his back that was soaked with sweat, he stood up to get a glass of water.
Whatever she tried to make him talk, it always ended up awkward silence. If she could just spill out that one word, she knew it would make a difference.
But no matter how many times the scene had been rehearsed in her head, when Cristina clasped her fingers above her stomach, with the ring beaming at the center, the residual of hesitation remained.
She wasn't good enough for him, she wasn't good enough for life. But she knew he was what she wanted, and Ellis Grey had told her it's always worth a try.
Another night of chocking silence would drive Cristina to the wall. If they wanted to revisit the silence game, they still had a lifetime for that.
Springing up from the bed, her hand still tightly holding onto the ring, Cristina headed straight to where Burke was sitting.
The poor man's heart wasn't designed to take too many blows, but if Burke wasn't even looking away from the food he was blindly shoving down his throat, something drastic had to be said to catch his attention.
"I don't do rings." Eager to make it sound genuine, Cristina annunciated each word with complete seriousness.
In her unique way to showed that she had given the proposal a lot of thought, Cristina laid the ring on the tablecloth.
The quiet rattle of the ring on the kitchen counter clearly brought a twitch to Burke's eyebrows. The look was beyond sheer disappointment, something Cristina didn't intentionally induce.
Burke might not be handling such a small disappointment well, but Cristina still had faith in him.
Without further delay, Cristina continued her potentially deplorable honesty about how she wouldn't suddenly change for him.
What Burke didn't seem to have caught, was the willingness to change embedded in her message—nothing soon or sudden, but change nonetheless.
Cristina's joke about hiring a wife bewildered Burke, but her fingers always worked magic.
Lacing her palm on his confusion-laden face, Cristina calmed the big boy in front of her as flawlessly as she gave Ellis Grey the carotid massage.
The stare Burke gave her was as penetrating as the uptightness steaming off his head. When he finally asked that question she had been anticipating all night, Cristina couldn't take her eyes off his handsome and mildly disturbed face.
The fact that Burke was looking at the table brought a smirk to Cristina's face.
Once the word flew through her mouth, Cristina could see how Burke was losing the game to conceal the mixed emotions surging through every feature on his face.
The way how he tried to contain himself by making up the rule of not letting her scrub in the day after only strengthened the deal that was going to be sealed.
The verbal exchange was so terse it didn't seem the least bit romantic, but by setting a certain boundary, they were breaking down each other's resolve.
A man who could respect and accommodate her unique wit about life was the one Cristina could truly receive with open arms.
Leaping up to seize his prize, Burke uprooted Cristina from the ground and spanned her round and round.
In the midst of the primal scream of elation that echoed between the walls, they ripped the buttons and united their lips.
Together they were helping each other towards the finish line, to what people called the end.
But really there was no such thing as an end for the two of them, not even till the end of time.
Giggling and rocking wildly in the dark, they were clearly intoxicated by love—
Something that tasted better than the finest wine, and would never ever run dry.
THE END