“But honestly?” His gaze holds mine, unwavering. “This feels more like us. You moving into our place. Me, standing in the middle of the life we built and asking if I can keep you in it forever.”
My heart feels too big for my body.
“Harlow Mercer,” he says, voice low and sure, “will you marry me?”
“Yes.”
The answer flies out of me before he’s even finished speaking.
“Yes,” I say again, laughing and crying all at once now. “Yes, obviously. Yes.”
His eyes close for one tiny second, relief washing across his face so openly it wrecks me all over again. Then he stands, hands shaking just enough that I notice, and slides the ring onto my finger.
It fits perfectly.
Of course it does.
When I look back up at him, he’s smiling in that stunned, beautiful way people do when something they wanted with their whole heart has actually happened.
I throw myself at him.
He catches me with a startled laugh, arms locking around me as I kiss him everywhere I can reach—his mouth, his cheek, the corner of his jaw.
“You had a ring,” I keep saying like an idiot.
He laughs against my lips. “I did.”
For a second, I can’t do anything but look at it.
Not because of what it is.
Because of what it means.
The girl I used to be wouldn’t have known how to stand inside a moment like this. She would have braced for it. Questioned it. Looked for the hidden sharp edge.
This version of me doesn’t.
This version lets herself have it.
Lets herself be loved.
Lets herself believe in the kind of future that once felt too dangerous to name.
Grayson brushes away the tears still damp on my cheeks. “What are you thinking?”
I look up at him.
“That I get to marry you.”
His smile turns soft and wrecked at the same time. “Yeah, you do.”
I laugh, shaky and full. “You sound very pleased with yourself.”
“I am.”
Then his gaze drops to the ring on my finger, and when he looks back at me, there’s that same certainty again. That same quiet, unshakable knowing.
“I’m going to love you for the rest of my life, Harlow.”
