“I thought you were going to sit in the audience,” I say, still breathless. “Not—” My throat tightens. “Not that.”
He studies me for a second, probably checking whether I mean it as a complaint.
“You hated it?” he asks, concerned.
I blink. “Are you insane? No. I almost died.”
“Okay,” he says, and some invisible tension in his shoulders eases. “Good.”
“When did you even decide this? How? Why?”
He slips the bow tie into his pocket and gives me a small smile.
“The second I heard you’d been added to the show,” he says. “I knew you were going to burn the place down. I wanted to be in it.”
“In it,” I echo.
“In your story,” he corrects. “Not just sitting there watching from the dark.”
He lifts my hand to his lips with both hands and kisses my knuckles.
“I’m your man,” he says, still holding my hand. “Which means I don’t stand on the sidelines while you climb. I put whatever I have where you need it. My name, my face, my time, my body in a tux. Whatever you’ll let me give.”
Something in my chest actually hurts from how emotional I’m getting. My head’s starting to ache from how tight I’m wired, but the warmth in my chest overpowers it.
“You will never be just the woman on my arm,” he says quietly. “You’re the woman next to me. And I’m gonna be the man next to you. That’s the deal. What do you say, Ms. Brooks?”
There are a million things I could say. All of it is an emotional word-vomit inside the part of me that is currently melted on the floor.
“That was…” I swallow. “A very dramatic way to say you wanted to play runway model for a night.”
He snorts. “Yeah, well. You’re not the only one allowed to be a little dramatic.”
I step closer. “That was very unfair of you,” I say. “Weaponizing my own designs against my cardiovascular system.”
“You’ll live.” His grin is dashing.
He leans in and captures my lips. It’s quick, just a press, but he catches my lower lip on the way out, tempted to turn it into something more.
“Jess?”
I turn.
My mom is ten feet away, one hand pressed to her chest, her eyes shimmering. My dad stands beside her, trying and failing to look like he hasn’t been crying either.
For a second my brain refuses to accept they’re real, like I conjured them out of pure adrenaline and wishful thinking.
“Mom?” My voice cracks.
She nods rapidly and then I’m in her arms. She smells like the laundry detergent she’s used my whole life and the perfume she won’t retire even though it’s been discontinued for years.
“My girl,” she keeps saying into my hair, words broken with tears. “My clever, beautiful girl. You did it.”
“I don’t understand,” I babble into her shoulder. “How are you here? When did you…I thought you—”
My dad’s arm folds around both of us, big and solid and warm.
“She’s been like this since we got off the plane,” he tells me. “Cried all over the TSA man too.”
