<blockquote>It all starts because Isabella asks him, point-blank, the question J.J.’s never quite had the nerve to ask himself. It’s tickled at the edge of his mind before, but he’s never let it take hold; it would only—complicate things.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you something,” she says, and there’s a glint in her eyes he hasn’t seen often. Curiosity and pleasure and apprehension all at once, like the day she asked him out for the first time, or years later when he dropped to one knee with a ring in his pocket and his words almost failing him.</blockquote>
