I exhale. The yes sits in my chest like a warm coin. No retakes. Not for this.
The SUV hums like a lullaby that used to be a headline. Heat fogs the windows; the city blurs into streaks of sodium orange and wet neon. I lean my forehead to the cool of the glass and watch tail lights bead and slide like someone tilted the whole world a few degrees.
Jason’s hand finds my knee like it always has—absent-minded and deliberate at once. “You good?” he asks, eyes on the road. His knuckles are still a little white on the wheel, leftover adrenaline refusing to listen to reason.
“I’m…good,” I say, testing the word against my ribs. It holds. “Tired. Happy. Terrified. In that order.”
He huffs a laugh. “Same. Maybe with ‘hungry’ wedged between happy and terrified.”
“Of course,” I say, amused by how purely him that is. The ring catches a streetlight and throws a quiet star onto my palm. I turn my hand and the star follows like it wants to stay.
“For the record,” he says, easing us into a turn, “I know that was not a textbook location for a proposal. I had a whole thing planned for later, maybe a rink after hours, twinkle lights, something that wouldn’t make Julia sprout gray hair. The hallway just…showed up and said ‘truth now.’”
“It was perfect,” I say, and feel the truth of it all the way down. “I don’t need choreography. I need…this. Us choosing when it’s messy.”
He nods, jaw softening. “Okay. Then we start choosing the other stuff. Small. No spectacle.”
“Small,” I echo, and the word opens a map. “Family first. Sophie, obviously. My mom—” I pause, tasting the edge of that. My mother is going to have opinions delivered like subpoenas. “I’ll call her tomorrow. After the review.”
“I’ll call my sister tonight,” he says. “She’ll cry and then send you eight Pinterest boards that will make you want to throw your phone into the river.”
I snort. “Tell her I love her already.”
“Team,” he says, checking a mirror. “We tell the room together. No surprises. We keep it simple: we’re engaged, we set boundaries, we keep doing our jobs.”
“Coach first,” I add. “Then the guys. Then we let PR decide what to put in a line and what to leave alone. No exclusives. No covers. No ‘meet the baby bump’ spreads.” My stomach turns at the phrase and he makes a face like he just licked a battery.
“Absolutely not,” he says. “This is not content; it’s our life.”
We fall into a planning cadence that feels like taping a knee before a game—routine, careful, soothing. Ceremony later, when the season isn’t a monster. Something small, maybe at home, maybe on a sheet of ice that matters to us and no one else. Teammates, family, the handful of humans who would show up with bagels and boxes instead of ring lights.
“What about the ring?” he asks, glancing at it like it might fly away. “If you want to change anything—stone, setting—say it. I won’t be offended. My taste is eighty percent ‘does it look like it won’t break.’”
I twist my hand, watch the stone catch the passing lights and throw them back. “It’s right,” I say. “It’s…quiet. Like us when the door shuts.”
He exhales, something unclenching I didn’t know he was holding. The car slips onto our street. A woman in a red coat jogs past with a dog that looks like a dust mop, and for a second the world is exactly as ordinary as I’ve been craving.
“Peace feels possible for a minute,” I say. “I want to hold it without squinting.”
“We hold it,” he says. “We write it down on the kitchen list next to ‘call counsel’ and ‘buy bread.’”
I laugh, soft, because of course there will be a list. “Put ‘tell Sophie she’s maid of honor’ at the top. She’ll make a spreadsheet for the bridal party socks.”
“Oh, she already has a template,” he says. “Trust me.” He pulls to the curb in front of our building and kills the engine. The quiet that follows is the good kind—the kind we built, not the kind the world forced.
We sit for one extra breath, like two people on a bench outside a rink, saving the walk inside for when they’re ready to face whatever’s on the other side of the door.
Upstairs, the apartment smells like lemon soap and rain drying off our coats. Jason hangs my jacket on the hook that’s slightly crooked because we are two competent adults who cannot commit to a level. The quiet is the same one that met us after the league meeting, but it sits differently now—less like a held breath, more like a room that remembered it has windows.
I toss my keys in the bowl and they make the soft ceramic clink that means we made it home. The ring flashes; the sound lands. My chest loosens—and then tightens in the next beat, muscle memory of a worry that doesn’t care about announcements or ink.
“I need to say something ugly out loud,” I tell him, because I promised myself to stop saving people from the mess of truth. I lean against the counter, palms flat on cool stone. “I am happy. I want this. I also don’t know who I am if I’m not the first one in and the last one out. I don’t know how to be a mother and not disappear.” The word leaves a metallic taste I hate myself for.
Jason doesn’t rush into comfort, which is its own kind of care. He steps to the other side of the island, giving me the spaceand the eye contact. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s build scaffolding so you don’t have to white-knuckle identity on your own.”
“Scaffolding,” I repeat, tasting it. “Not a plan you hand me like a gift I didn’t ask for.”
“Exactly.” He taps the counter, counting on his fingers, not to convince me but to organize the air. “Flexible schedules—yours first. You pick clinic hours that respect your body. You block days that are yours. We loop counsel so HR puts it in writing. If anyone calls it special treatment, I show them my night feed log.”
