He laughed. That full, rare laugh I'd learned to treasure—Garrett didn't give those away easily. He was serious by default. Watchful. The kind of person who held himself in reserve until he trusted you.
The laugh meant he trusted me.
We made it work. His precision, my chaos. His early mornings, my late nights. He cleaned; I cooked. He organized the bills; I remembered birthdays. Two people who shouldn't have fit, fitting perfectly.
He proposed on our rooftop.
Two years in. A Tuesday evening in September—the kind of perfect autumn night that made you understand why people wrote poems about New York. He'd asked me to come up to watch the sunset. I'd teased him about being romantic.
He'd just smiled.
The city stretched out below us, lights flickering on as dusk settled. I was leaning against the railing, telling him about a source who'd finally agreed to go on the record for a story I'd been chasing for months. Mid-sentence, I realized he'd gone quiet.
"Garrett? You okay?"
He pulled a small velvet box from his pocket.
My heart stopped. Actually stopped, for one suspended moment, I can still feel it if I close my eyes.
"Sloane Harper." He opened the box. The ring caught the fading light—simple, elegant, a solitaire diamond on a white gold band. Not flashy. Not ostentatious.
Just beautiful, in that understated way that meant he'd paid attention to who I was.
"I know you don't need anyone to complete you," he said. "You're already whole. But I'd really like to spend the rest of my life trying to keep up with you." His voice was steady, but his hands weren't. "Will you marry me?"
I said yes before he finished the sentence.
He slid the ring onto my finger, and I laughed—really laughed, the kind that came from somewhere deep—and he pulled me close.
We stood there on that rooftop with the whole city glittering below us, his arms around me, my face pressed against his chest. Everything felt possible.
We're going to have this, I thought. All of it.
I found out I was pregnant three months later.
A missed period. A test from the pharmacy down the street. Two pink lines that changed everything.
"Garrett." My voice was shaking. I couldn't make it stop. "Garrett, I'm?—"
He looked at the test. Looked at me.
His face transformed. Wonder and joy and terror, all at once, cycling through so fast I could barely track them. His eyes went bright. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"We're having a baby?"
"We're having a baby."
He lifted me off my feet. Spun me around. Set me down and kissed me until neither of us could breathe.
We started planning that same night. Names—argued about them for hours, couldn't agree on anything. Nurseries—he wanted yellow, I wanted green, we compromised on sage. Bigger apartments with an extra bedroom. Places where a family could grow.
The future unfurled like a map to somewhere beautiful.
Six weeks later, the doctor frowned at my chart.
Your stress levels are concerning." She was looking at numbers I didn't understand, test results that meant something to her and nothing to me. "Your blood pressure is elevated. Ms. Harper, for the baby's sake, I need you to slow down."
Slow down.
