Chapter 38 HIGH HOPES

My mouth was fully open as much as it could be. I was shocked and astounded at what was happening. And not to make me look stupid in front of all the people at Erica’s wedding, I had partially covered my mouth with the bouquet that the bride handed over to me.

I was absolutely in surprise and didn’t know how to react to what he asked. I hadn’t thought of marriage once I started working because the priority was to first settle down in life and be independent, after which, of course, a wedding would follow if I found my soulmate until then. If not, without a question the search would have been on.

And right now, in front of my eyes, the man who I like very much is not just standing but kneeling down on one knee waiting for an answer from me on whether I will marry him. It is overwhelming, and I am not able to decide if I should scream out in happiness or if I should cry because something like this I had never thought of happening in my life.

Being with a billionaire was on one side, but he asking me to marry him was on a different level altogether. I had always felt very differently for him, but I didn’t know if it was love because I wasn’t aware of what love felt like. I had seen many people in love, but all that was happening with me from the time that I moved in with Charles was very new.

My life had been very simple, and such a fancy fantasy never took over me. It wasn’t a realistic thought for something like this to happen considering how tough my life has been. More over the tough choices which I made in my life that ended up in leading me to that very moment. But now it was getting late and people started panicking to know my answer to Charles’s question as it had been a while since he had got down on one knee.

Without taking any more time, as my hands were covering my mouth with the bouquet that I was holding, I nodded my head almost as much as I could move it to give him my answer. Which dumbass girl wouldn’t want to marry someone she loves and especially if that guy loved her back, making her the most lucky girl in the entire world.

The guy not only being this settled but also a billionaire and handling many businesses could clearly be the reason for any girl to say “yes” to him. To me, all this was stupendous, and it was becoming too much for me. So, I quickly transferred the bouquet that I was holding in my left hand to my right one and put forward my left hand for him to grab it.

As he took out the ring from the box, I couldn’t believe how much money this crazy guy must have spent on the ring in which I saw nothing else but diamonds. A big one and many small ones around the loop of the ring. As he was putting it on my ring finger of the left hand, I felt his hands were warmer, that was enough to explain how he was feeling at that moment.

It was completely unexpected of him to have done something like that because I had never seen him being romantic at all. He was very straightforward and extremely practical who cared about nothing else but his business. Emotions to him never played an important role from what I knew. Even hearing about him from others told me enough about how he was in reality.

I finally came to terms with the fact that the talk that we had at dinner and in the car just a few days before was about me. I felt so very special just like the way I have been feeling every single day ever since from the moment he slid the piece of paper in my hand at the museum until today as I wait for him to come home to me after being away for one whole week.

The three months with him at the start were no less than a fairy tale. Living in the mansion he owned, the car that he gifted, and the way he gradually made me his girlfriend without me actually realizing it. I was under the impression that he was doing those things because they were important to do at that time. Never could I have possibly thought of this big man being romantically interested in me to the level that he would want to marry me.

For the first time was when he showed possessiveness over me when I planned to spend one night at a friend’s house, and then it kept growing every week. He had always asked me questions pertaining to what I ate, how my day was, studies in college, so on and so forth. Adding on top of that was the car he had got for me to travel to and fro only because I had missed the bus once.

I stood in front of him with my hands gone back to covering my mouth after I accepted his proposal, thinking about the way things had been falling in line, which was something which I had never really thought of. Even though I had high hopes for them to happen, but I knew I was nowhere close to the chicks who he went out with, and that was convincing enough for me not to continue building castles in the air.

As we stood together and turned to everybody who was standing at the wedding watching such a romantic proposal and that too of the richest man in town asking a mediocre girl to marry him, it was definitely a dream come true for many of them. I couldn’t believe that I was the chosen one, and all of that was happening to me.

Out of all the rest, out of all the most beautiful ones, and the rich ones, and the settled ones, and every other chick, I was the one Mr. Lozano chose to propose to. It was not like I planned for all of that to happen, and neither did I force him into doing such stuff. To say, I wasn’t even pregnant and nothing else to bind him had happened. That was unlike the rumors which became widespread later on following the proposal, but still nothing stopped us from being together after that.

We decided not to get married immediately after that because we were supposed to give others time to digest it. The media people wouldn’t leave us since then. They followed us almost everywhere we went. We did not have even a single date that was not disrupted by any of the reporters.

Not that it was new. Such actions had been happening before also, but at least not to the extent that they started to happen after Charles’s proposal. The point was that I had officially become his girlfriend, and I was also going to be the future Mrs. Lozano.

That just reminded me of the feeling I got when the thought of becoming Mrs. Lozano had struck in my head. Back then I didn’t know anything at all about the acceptable norms of the behavior that I was expected to be displaying. And it was very scary to me because the media people had started following me from then.

I remember how scared I was to step out of the house during the initial stages. I would rather pass by an opportunity to be seen outside in public with Charles. In the beginning, Charles ignored it, but as time passed, he understood that I was doing it on purpose, and from then onwards none of my excuses were taken into consideration. I had to do anything that he wanted me to do.

The way my life turned out from that point is very interesting to know because I never really thought there was a different side of me as well. It came out only when I had my exams in college a few months after the marriage proposal.