I drop to one knee.
Annie gasps.
“I’ve been a lot of things in this life,” I say, voice raw. “Broken. Bleeding. Lonely, lost, healing, determined, and scared out of my damn mind. But I’ve never been sure of anything the way I’m sure of this. Of you. Of us.”
I lift the box and open it.
The ring gleams—delicate, silver, and shaped like a crescent moon wrapping gently around a tiny cluster of diamonds, stardust caught mid-fall.
It feels like her.
“Annalise Adams,” I say, tasting her name like it’s the only thing that matters. “I fell halfway in love with you beneath a honey moon, and the other half came just as easy.”
A tiny sob breaks free.
She doesn’t move. Hardly breathes. But I feel every bit of her, anchored in the moment.
“I’ve spent years trying to make sense of this life. And somehow, you were always the quiet answer waiting in all of it. I don’t need perfect, Annie. I just need you. The girl who held my hand through the dark and sang me back to life.” I hold up the ring, my pulse tearing through me. “Will you marry me?”
For a second, she doesn’t say anything. Just stares at me through tears I can’t see but feel pouring from her like light.
Then she laughs, wrecked and radiant.
She sinks to her knees in front of me, grabbing my face in both hands and kissing me hard, fast, full of every lyric we never wrote down.
When she finally pulls back, her voice breaks on one word. “Maybe.”
I hear the smile in her voice, feel the love wrapped around all her perfect pieces, and I swear her eyes are twinkling with every star, every moon.
Grinning wide, I pull her closer.
Dip her.
And cover her mouth with mine.
“Sounds like a yes.”
EpilogueAnnalise
Four Seasons, A Second Chance, And No More Running
??Fall
The shows feel different now. Louder in the right ways. Softer in the ones that matter.
A label picked us up. We’re back on tour.
Not a hundred cities in a hundred days, not chasing numbers or fame, but choosing our stops like we choose each other. With purpose. With breath.
Rock starts journaling.
Kenna’s suspicious. I’m proud. Zach is just shocked he found a pen.
We opened our fall leg in Asheville. The crowd knew every word to our new single. Chase couldn’t see them, but he could hear the love. He stood next to me onstage and said afterward, “That was the clearest I’ve ever seen.”
I wrote that down. I don’t want to forget it.
***
