“You’d like Millie.” The corner of my mouth lifts. “She’s doing good. Really good. She’s working for a jeweler in town now. Started a few months ago. She’s studying too. Got her gemology certificate. Says she wants to design her own pieces one day.”
I picture her at the kitchen table, books spread everywhere, tongue caught between her teeth while she concentrates. The memory softens something deep inside me.
“She’s brilliant,” I murmur. “You would’ve told me not to screw that up.” The truth settles heavy in my chest. “I almost did.”
I shake my head. “But she didn’t let me.”
Silence stretches. I glance down at my hands, then pull one free from my pocket. The small velvet box rests in my palm, dark and unassuming. The weight of it feels heavier than it should.
I went to a dozen shops before I found it. Felt like a fool, a man my size hunched over glass cases for hours. But ithad to be right. She spends her days making beautiful things for other people—stringing them, setting them, sending them off to strangers. For once, somebody’s going to put something beautiful on her. It had to be perfect. I think it is.
“I’m going to ask her to marry me.” The words echo in the quiet, a strange mix of nerves and anticipation coiling low in my gut.
“I wanted to tell you first.”
Because he’s the reason I’m here. The reason I didn’t rot in that cell. The reason I learned how to hope again.
“You saved my life,” I say simply. “You saw something in me when no one else did. Even when I didn’t see it myself.”
Emotion tightens my throat. I swallow hard.
“You told me that if I ever got out, I should build something. Something that mattered. Something bigger than my anger.”
My gaze lifts to the horizon beyond the cemetery. “I did that. I’m still doing it.” The breeze picks up, colder now. “And I found her.”
My Millie.
The girl who walked into my life like sunshine breaking through a storm.
“She’s everything,” I admit. “She’s…peace. She’s fire. She’s home.”
I let out a slow breath.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve her. But I’m not letting her go.”
I crouch, setting the velvet box gently against the base of the headstone for a moment.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
For the first time in a long time, the past doesn’t feel like a chain around my neck. It feels like a road behind me. A road that led me here.
After a moment, I pick up the box and tuck it back into my pocket.
“I’ll bring her next time,” I say, standing. “If she says yes, that is.” A small smile pulls at my mouth. “You’d probably call me a chicken for that.”
I turn and walk back down the path, the anxiety in my chest growing heavier with every step.
***
Millie
I scrunch my nose absentmindedly as the faint, familiar scent of burning food teases my senses. And then it suddenly hits me—
“Shoot! My sauce!”
I rush to the stove, grabbing the wooden spoon and stirring like that will somehow undo the damage. The tomato sauce has gone darker than it should, sticking to the bottom of the pot. My heart is beating too fast, my hands shaking so badly I almost drop the spoon.
I turn the heat down, take a deep breath.
