Tru’s eyes narrowed. “What are you?—”
“Just—stay with me.”
I handed him the envelope. It was heavy. Thicker than a letter. He peeked inside and pulled out puzzle pieces, hand-cut and painted in watercolor. His favorite shades of blue.
He poured them onto the table, looking confused.
“Put it together,” I said softly.
He glanced up at me. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Tru knelt on the floor in his too-big shorts, tongue between his teeth like he always did when he was focused, fitting piece into piece until the picture emerged.
It was us, drawn in soft lines, sitting cross-legged on our dorm bed, sharing headphones. He was laughing, and I was looking at him like I’d lost my heart, irrevocably. The inspiration had come straight from his sketchbook.
And at the bottom, in my messy all-caps handwriting:
“WILL YOU STAY? FOR KEEPS?”
Tru stared at it for a long time, fingers trembling as he brushed over the words.
I dropped to one knee and pulled the ring from my pocket. It had been hiding in my sock drawer for weeks. Yeah, I know—real classy. But he’d have found it anywhere else.
“Truen Jameson,” I said, heart pounding. “You’ve been my almost, my always, and my favorite pain in the ass since the day I met you twelve years ago. I want to be your husband. I want to fight over where the laundry goes, watch you fall asleep on the couch every Friday night, and figure out where the hell we keep the scissors because we can never find them. I want you by my side, for every morning, every storm, and every version of who we become.”
I looked up at him. “Will you marry me?”
He didn’t say anything for a second. He threw his arms around me and breathed into my neck.
“Yes. Yes, you idiot. I love you so fucking much.”
When I slid the ring onto his finger, it was slightly crooked, but he didn’t care. He was crying and laughing and still kneeling on the puzzle pieces, sayingyesover and over like the word finally belonged to him.
We kissed as if it were our first.
Hell, it was better than our first.
And when we finally lay down on the hardwood floor, tangled in each other and framed by our mess and life and clutter, I kissed his neck and whispered, “You were always the piece I couldn’t figure out. But I wasn’t complete without you.”
Tru pressed his forehead to mine. “That’s ’cause you were missing one too.”
We stayed like that for a long time—breathing the same air, surrounded by the wreckage of wrapping paper, puzzle dust, and the quiet hum of the city outside our window. Every version of us—the awkward kids, the scared teens, the stubborn, broken almost’s—seemed to settle into this one moment, finally at rest.
I thought about how many times I’d wanted to go back and start over, to fix the mistakes and say the right things. But maybe love wasn’t about rewinding. Maybe it was about surviving all the wrong turns until you ended up exactly where you were supposed to be.
Tru’s fingers found mine, his ring catching the light. Hissmile was small but no less brilliant. “We’re really doing this,” he whispered.
“Yeah,” I said, brushing my thumb over the black tungsten band on his finger. “We already are.”
Outside, a siren wailed somewhere far away, and the city carried on. Inside, it felt like everything finally stopped moving.
For once, I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
CHAPTER 47
DARE
