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I can’t breathe.

I literally cannot pull air into my lungs. My hands are shaking in his, and my vision is blurry from tears, and somewhere in the background I register that a camera is pointed at us and our faces are on every giant screen in the stadium, but none of that matters because Alexei Ivan is on one knee on a football field asking me to marry him, and two months ago I was standing outside a bar wondering how I was going to make rent.

“Oh my gosh,” I manage. “You’re proposing.”

He grins—that grin, the one with the crinkled eyes. “That was the plan. Win the game. Get the girl.”

“You already had the girl.”

“Then keep her. Forever. Live happily ever after… it’s kind of a whole thing.”

He opens his hand. The ring catches the stadium lights and sparks glimmer—a diamond so big and beautiful that my first, absurd thought is that can’t be real, followed immediately by yes it can, because this man once bought a crib without asking and paid my heating bill behind my back, and if anyone is going to produce a ring like this from thin air on a football field, it’s him.

“What do you say, baby?”

I’m crying. Full-on, mascara-ruining, shoulders-shaking crying, and I don’t care that it’s on camera, and I don’t care that fifty thousand people are watching, and I don’t care about a single thing in the universe except the man on his knee in front of me.

“Yes.” It comes out as barely a whisper, so I say it again, louder. “Yes. Yes, obviously yes.”

The stadium erupts. Louder than the touchdown. Louder than anything I’ve ever heard. Alexei slides the ring onto my trembling finger and stands, and I throw my arms around his neck, and he lifts me again, spinning me, and the confetti is falling around us like snow, and I’m laughing and sobbing into his neck while fifty thousand strangers cheer.

Oh my gosh.

He kisses me. Not a polite, we’re-on-camera kiss. A real one—his mouth on mine, his hand in my hair, deep and thorough and completely inappropriate for national television, and I kiss him back just as hard because I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it. I care about him. Only him. Forever him.

When we finally pull apart, I’m breathless. “You need a shower.”

“Come with me.”

“Absolutely not.”

He laughs, pressing his forehead against mine. “Worth a shot.”

I look down at my hand. The ring is absurd—massive, sparkling, the kind of ring that makes a statement. My hand is still shaking.

“This is too much,” I say.

He kisses my knuckles. “I wanted you to have the best.”

“Bossy.”

“Always.”

His teammates are closing in—Weston first, pulling Alexei into a hug and then turning to me with this huge grin. “Welcome to the family, Ry.” Briggs. Tate. Doug, who looks like he might actually cry. Even Coach Royce gives me a nod that, from him, qualifies as a full emotional breakdown. It’s so unexpected that I’m still fighting back tears.

The sisters find me on the field—all three of them, materializing out of the chaos like they planned extraction routes in advance. Valerie is already crying. Ana keeps grabbing my hand to look at the ring. Tracey wraps me in a hug so tight I can’t breathe and says, “It’s about damn time,” into my hair.

Alexei has to go—team stuff, locker room, press, the whole post-championship routine—and he kisses me one more time before jogging backward across the field, pointing at me, mouthing something I can’t hear but understand anyway.

I watch him go. His broad back, his teammates clapping him on the shoulders, the way he turns and looks back at me one more time before disappearing into the tunnel.

Then it hits me. All of it. Standing on this field in his jersey with his ring on my finger and confetti in my hair and his sisters around me and his mother watching on TV with our daughter on her lap.

Our daughter.

Two months ago, I was alone. I had nothing. No family, no plan, no hope that things would get better. And then a man I didn’t know stopped on a street corner because he was raised to help, and everything changed.

I bring the ring to my lips and press a kiss against the diamond, tasting salt from my own tears, and Valerie puts her arm around me and says, “Let’s go find some champagne,” and I laugh, and I nod, and I follow my sisters into the crowd.