He turned to face me, taking both my hands in his. His eyes were so serious it made my stomach flip.
“Hazel Bradford,” he said, voice low but carrying. “You know I’m not a man of many words.”
I snorted. He ignored me.
“But there are some things I don’t ever want you to forget.” His fingers tightened around mine. “You brought me back to life. You walked into a dilapidated inn and made it a home. You took a man who’d been a shell half his life and made him want a future.”
My throat closed. The world blurred at the edges. Behind him, I could see shadows of people on the porch—family leaning against columns, women clustered in the doorway, Maude in her apron, Byron’s tall silhouette near the railing.
Gideon swallowed. For a second, it looked like he might actually panic.
Then he dropped to one knee.
The porch went completely silent.
“Gideon,” I breathed, heart hammering.
He let go of one of my hands long enough to pull something from his pocket. A small box, dark and worn around the edges.
“I know you don’t like big flashy things,” he said. “You work with your hands. You paint. You hammer. You climb ladders you shouldn’t. You’re going to be in the middle of renovations for the foreseeable future because you can’t leave anything half-finished.”
“Accurate,” I managed.
“So, I wanted you to have something you could wear every day,” he went on. “Something solid. Something that wouldn’t catch on nails or get in the way when you’re wrestling with Maude’s supply deliveries. Something that … fits.”
He opened the box.
The ring inside was simple and beautiful and very, very us.
A slim band of warm gold, brushed instead of polished, so it didn’t look too new. A narrow row of tiny diamonds sat flush in the metal, catching the light without rising above it. In the center, where most people would put a taller stone, there wasa single, small emerald sunk into the band—just a whisper of green, the same shade as my eyes when the light hit them right.
It looked like it could withstand a fall from a ladder and a paint spill and a lifetime of dishwashing.
It looked like forever.
“I had it made from your grandmother’s wedding band,” he said quietly. “Maude helped me sneak it out of the safe. We added the stones. Kept the gold. Figured she wouldn’t mind sharing a piece of her history with our future. Just like the inn.”
My vision blurred all the way now. “You—Gideon?—”
He held my gaze, eyes steady, voice rough. “Hazel Bradford, I love you. I love your lists and your stubbornness and the way you talk to this house like it’s listening. I love that you chose this place and chose me even when everything in your past told you to run. I want to spend the rest of my life making sure you never have to run again. Will you marry me?”
The world held its breath.
I could feel every eye on us. Every story in the bodies behind him—a ballerina with scars on her toes, a chef with burns on her hands, an actress who’d learned what real stakes felt like, a harpist who’d crossed an ocean, a wedding planner who’d seen a thousand “forevers” and still believed in her own.
Brothers who’d been broken and sharpened and still stood together.
A father who’d come back.
And this man, on his knees in the spot where my old life had ended, offering me a version of the future I’d never dared imagine.
“Yes,” I said, my voice cracking on the single word. “Of course, yes.”
Relief flashed across his face, followed by a grin that could’ve lit the marsh.
He slid the ring onto my finger—steady hands, warm touch. It fit perfectly, snug and sure, the emerald winking up at me like it knew something.
The porch erupted.
