The entire building gasps with me.
Liam brings the mic to his mouth, eyes never leaving mine.
“A long time ago,” he begins, voice steady but soft, “there was this shy kid in middle school art class. He didn’t talk much. He had a lot going on at home. He didn’t feel safe anywhere… except when he sat next to one girl.”
My chest squeezes.
“She made him feel calm. Seen. Like maybe he wasn’t broken after all.” He swallows, emotion thickening his voice. “And as they grew up, that friendship turned into more. It was high school love, burning, intense, and full of promises. The kind that feels like the whole world.”
He smiles a little, small and aching.
“But then she was gone. No goodbye. No explanation. Just gone. And all those promises were made? They stayed with him. Every day.” He pauses, breath catching almost too subtly for the crowd to notice, but I see it.
Everyone is completely silent.
“You could say he grew up,” he goes on. “He became a man. Made some mistakes. Carried some heavy things he didn’t know how to put down. And one night, he found himself in a situation he couldn’t get out of.”
He’s staring at me as he’s reciting this. I can’t quite read his emotions at the moment, “And that situation led him straight to her door,” he says quietly. “Not the girl he remembered… but the woman she’d become.”
You could hear a pin drop in this arena.
My cheeks are on fire. My heart is thundering so hard it might punch its way out of my throat.
Liam takes a slow breath, still looking right at me.
“In fairy tales,” he says, voice deep and steady through the speakers, “there’s always a test. A threat. Something that tries to tear the two people apart. But fate… fate always finds a way to pull them back together.”
My vision blurs for a second. Oh God.
“And that’s what happened to us,” he goes on. “Fate put me right back in front of my first love. Even when things got dangerous. Even when everything tried to take us down… we fought. We survived. We found our way back.”
He gives a tiny, shy smile that absolutely destroys me.
“And like any good story,” he says softly, “We beat the monsters. Now all that’s left is the happily-ever-after. Or at least… I hope so.”
Trinity Preston steps forward at the perfect moment and hands him a small velvet box. It’s open, displaying a truly stunning princess-cut solitaire ring that catches the arena lights so brightly it throws tiny stars across the ice.
My breath catches.
“Emma Reyes, we vanquished demons together. We fell apart, but we put ourselves back together. We made a friggin’ awesome kid together.” A laugh ripples through the crowd. “And I’ve wanted you since I was sixteen years old. I have loved you for longer than that. Will you marry me?”
A heartbeat passes, and I am suspended in it, overwhelmed and overstimulated and thinking about the years when Liam Callaghan was my everything and the years when I pretended he was not. And here he is now, sandy-haired and nervous and handsome, and I want nothing less than forever with him.
“Yes.”
His grin widens as he gets to his feet, handing over the microphone to Trinity as he slips the ring on my left ring finger.
“She said yes!” Trinity announces, and the crowd erupts in cheers.
Liam pulls me to him, and he’s even taller on skates than he is in real life, so he has to bend down to kiss my head, then even lower to kiss my lips.
I’m grinning and crying at the same time like an idiot.
“That was a big speech for you, champ.”
“I know, he says, “I feel like I might puke.”
I laugh as the tears roll down my cheeks and kiss him again before turning to follow the red carpet off the ice.
