"Why didn't you?"
"I don't know. Something told me I needed to be here." She smiled up at him. "Turns out it was right."
The tree lighting was at seven. The whole town seemed to gather in the square, families with children on their shoulders, couples pressed close against the cold. Mayor Patterson gave a short speech that nobody listened to, and then the tree blazed to life, thousands of lights reflecting off the frost.
Brian spotted Hank and Bree in the crowd. Colby and Sabrina. Dr. Hendricks with his wife. Ruth from the bookstore. Diaz, off duty, with a man Brian assumed was her husband. The whole community, gathered together in the cold celebrating something as simple as lights on a tree.
This was home. These were his people. And the woman beside him was everything.
"Come with me," he said.
"Where?"
"You'll see."
He led her away from the crowd, past the edge of the market, up the path that wound toward the bluff. The frost crunched under their feet. The sounds of the celebration faded behind them.
The bluff overlooked the bay, the water dark and endless under the winter sky. The copper moon hung low on the horizon, huge and luminous, painting everything in its warm glow.
"Brian." Tessa's voice was soft. "What are we doing up here?"
He turned to face her. His heart was pounding, his hands sweating despite the cold. He'd rehearsed this a hundred times in his head, and now every word had vanished.
"Six months ago," he started, "a woman showed up at my door with a double-booked rental and a complete refusal to leave."
"I didn’t have anywhere to go."
He smiled despite his nerves. "And I spent the next week trying to convince myself that I didn't want you there. That you were an inconvenience. That I was better off alone."
"You were very convincing."
"I was an idiot." He took her hands. "I spent two years hiding from everything. From the job I loved, from the people who cared about me, from any chance of being happy again. And then you showed up, and you wouldn't let me hide anymore. You saw through every wall I'd built and you just... stayed."
"Brian." Her eyes were bright.
"You told me once that you were going to marry me someday. A statement of intent, you called it." He reached into his pocket, pulled out the ring box. "I'm making my own statement."
He went down on one knee on the frost-covered grass, the cold soaking through his jeans immediately. He didn't care.
"Tessa Callahan. You saved me. Not from Carla, not from Webb. From myself. From the person I was becoming." He opened the box, and the ring caught the moonlight. "I don't want to imagine my life without you in it. I don't want to spend another day wondering what this could be. I want forever. With you. Starting now."
She was crying. Smiling and crying, her breath coming out in white puffs.
"Will you marry me?"
"Yes." She pulled him to his feet and kissed him, her cold hands on his face, her tears wet against his cheeks. "Yes. A thousand times, yes."
He slid the ring onto her finger with shaking hands. It fit perfectly.
"I love you," she said.
"I love you too." He pulled her close, holding her tight against the cold. "Forever."
They stood on the bluff, wrapped around each other, the copper moon watching over them like a blessing. Below, the town glittered with lights. Behind them, the sounds of celebration drifted up on the wind.
Brian Knight had spent two years running from his past.
Now he had a future.
