She breaks around me with a final cry that echoes through the room as she falls apart beneath me. I don’t stop thrusting into her, chasing my own edge with gritted teeth and her name on repeat like my favorite song.
When my release hits, when I finally spill everything I have into her, it’s with a guttural, helpless moan that causes my vision to blur and my hips to stutter. I surrender myself to her for the hundredth time, and it feels like everything in the world—at least,myworld—is right again.
We collapse into each other with tangled limbs, damp skin, and heaving chests. I bury my face in her neck as she traces her fingers along my spine like she never wants to let go.
“I love you,” I breathe, completely spent but satisfied for the first time in months. “More than anything in my life, I love you, Mia Michele Alexander. It scares the hell out of me, but it’s worth it. You will always be worth it.”
She hums, smiling softly against the top of my head. “I love you, too. Forever and ever, and then some.”
I pull my face away from her shoulder and kiss her slowly—no heat, no urgency, just reverence. Just everything I’ve been carrying that I haven’t been able to say.
As we drift into the quiet afterward, still wrapped in each other’s arms, all I can think is: the next time I do this, she’ll have my ring on her finger, and I’m going to make damn sure she’ll never have a reason to ever take it off.
I stand alone in the greenroom because it’s quiet.
But it’stooquiet.
My jacket hangs over the back of the couch. I had bought it new, just for tonight, with a special pocket sewn into the inside just for the ring box. Everything else is ready.
My boots are laced.
My guitar is tuned.
Everyone is in place.
The lights are ready to drop, and the ring box is in my hand.
I place it so it sits open on my knee as I sit on the couch, sparkling even under the dim light of backstage. It’s like the diamond is winking at me—as if it knows what’s coming.
God, I hope I haven’t ruined the surprise.
I close the box and turn it in my palm, just as I had done in the hospital. But this time, I’m not sitting in an uncomfortable chair, begging for the love of my life to wake up. She’shere. Just outside the door, waiting for me. Alive. Healing. Whole.
Yet I’ve never been more terrified in my life.
Not because I think she’ll say no. I don’t think she will.
But because I want this to go perfectly. Because she deserves magic. For this moment to be everything she’s ever wanted.
I want her to feel every second of it deeper than she’s ever felt anything in her life. I want us to be sitting on our porch swing twenty years from now talking about how this was the best night of our lives. To be able to remember how the crowd went crazy when she said yes. How the lights glowed. The way the music swelled. How she knew—without a single doubt—that she had ruined me for anyone else for the rest of my life.
A knock on the door pulls me out of my reverie.
It cracks open, and Jake leans in, a goofy grin on his face.
“Five minutes,” he calls. “Sound is tight, the lights are set, and your girl? Man, you aresoscrewed.”
My heart kicks hard.
My girl.
Jake’s stupid grin gets even bigger. “You good?”
“I will be,” I say honestly. “She’s just gotta say yes.”
He steps inside fully and gives my shoulder a quick squeeze—firm, solid.
“She’s going to say yes, Gray,” he says, like a promise. “You’ve come a long way from being the scrawny eighteen-year-old kid who started this whole thing. She’d be a fool to say no—twice. Just try not to black out.”
