My eyes sting.
“Somewhere in the middle of pretending,” he says quietly, “nothing about this felt pretend anymore.”
The crowd has gone completely silent. All I can hear is my own heartbeat. Ethan lets go of my hand, but only for a second. Just long enough to reach into his coat pocket.
My breath catches. No. No, surely not. He drops to one knee. Right there on the wooden platform, under the pine arch, in front of the entire town.
Someone gasps. Someone else says, “Oh my God.” Ruby is definitely squealing. I clap a hand over my mouth.
Ethan looks up at me, eyes unguarded, every wall I’ve ever seen in him lowered.
“Harper Fox,” he says, and my name in his mouth feels like its own kind of promise, “you’ve spent your life making memories in glass because real ones are scary and fragile.”
Tears blur my vision.
“You gave me a week I’ll never forget,” he continues. “You turned my mountain back into a home. You made me want more than seven days with you.”
He opens his hand. There, nestled in his palm, is a ring. Simple, elegant. A small round diamond framed by a delicate halo of tiny stones that sparkle like snow under the lights.
My knees wobble.
“I don’t want this to end when the decorations come down,” he says. “I don’t want to go back to pretending I’m fineon my own. I don’t want to just be your fake husband for a week.” His throat works. “I want to be the real one.”
A tear slips down my cheek.
“Harper,” he says softly, so only I might hear it if not for the utter silence in the square, “will you marry me? For real this time?”
The world narrows to him and this moment. To everything we’ve shared in such a short, impossible, perfect time.
I could overthink it. I could look around at the crowd. At Janice. At Ruby, who is absolutely silently screaming.
I could list all the reasons this is too fast, too wild, too much.
Instead, I see his cabin in our snow globe. The way he held my hand at the banquet. The way he kissed me like he’d known me a lifetime. The way he looked at me when he said he didn’t regret a thing.
“Ethan,” I whisper, lowering my hand from my mouth. “Yes.”
My voice wobbles, but the word is clear.
“Yes,” I say again, louder this time as the crowd collectively inhales. “I’ll marry you.”
The square explodes. Cheering. Applause. Whistles. Ruby shouting something vaguely obscene in excitement. Someone yelling, “We knew it!”
I barely hear any of it. Ethan exhales a breath that sounds like relief, joy and wonder all at once. His hands tremble just a little as he slides the ring onto my finger. It fits perfectly.
He stands, and I don’t care that we’re in front of the entire town. I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him. He kisses me back like I’m the only person in the world.
When we finally break apart, I’m laughing through my tears, and his forehead rests against mine, both of us breathless.
“Guess this week wasn’t just pretend after all,” I whisper.
“Not for me,” he says.
“Not for me either.”
And as the snow swirls softly around us and the town celebrates, I realize I don’t need to trap this memory under glass. I get to live it each day — with him.
Epilogue
