My pulse goes completely feral.
He disappears down the hallway, and I hear the soft slide of a drawer opening in the bedroom. I press a hand to my mouth and immediately start crying, which is humiliating but also unavoidable at this point.
“Happy tears,” I call toward the hallway.
His laugh carries back to me. “Still tears.”
When he returns, there’s a small velvet box in his hand.
For one suspended second, everything in me goes quiet.
The apartment is warm. Rain taps against the windows. There are half-unpacked boxes stacked by the wall and takeout containers on the coffee table and a skating program playing silently in the background.
It is not a grand gesture.
It is not candlelight or rose petals or some perfectly staged moment on a rooftop overlooking the city.
It is ours.
And somehow that makes it better than anything I could have imagined.
Grayson stops in front of me, looking wrecked and steady all at once.
“I had a speech,” he says.
I laugh through my tears. “You still can.”
He glances down at the ring box in his hand. “I definitely cannot do the whole thing now.”
“Yes, you can.”
He draws in a breath.
Then he drops to one knee.
The sight of it hits me so hard I put both hands over my mouth.
His eyes never leave mine.
“Harlow,” he says, and my name in his voice sounds like a prayer and a promise and every safe place I’ve ever known. “I loved you before I knew what to do with it. Before anything was easy. Before either of us knew what this would look like.”
A tear slips down my cheek.
He smiles a little when he sees it, but his own eyes are bright too.
“You changed my life in all the best ways. In the real way. The way that matters. You made every place feel more likehome. You made the future feel like something I wanted instead of something I was just working toward.” His voice roughens. “And every version of my life that makes sense—every one I want—has you in it.”
I am fully crying now. There’s no point fighting it.
He opens the box.
The ring is delicate and beautiful, a round diamond set in a thin gold band with tiny stones catching the light on either side. It’s elegant without being fussy. Soft, classic, perfect.
Perfect.
“I was going to wait until this weekend,” he says, smiling shakily. “Maybe take you somewhere with a view. Pretend I was being smooth.”
I laugh through a sob.
