“What are you thinking?” Sunny asked softly, breaking into his thoughts.
Liam looked down at her, this remarkable woman who had brought light back into his darkened world. She had loved his daughters as if they were her own from the very beginning.
Kate’s face flashed in his mind — not the pale, lifeless version that haunted his nightmares, but the vibrant, laughing Kate he had known, her eyes dancing with mischief. What would she think of this moment?
Strangely, he could almost hear her voice, feel her presence beside him.
“Life’s too short for second-guessing good things when you find them, Liam.”
It had been her mantra, one he’d often found frustratingly impulsive during their marriage. Now, it felt like permission.
In that moment, with perfect clarity, he knew exactly what he wanted. The two words emerged from a deep, instinctive place, bypassing his usual cautious deliberation. Yet, the moment they left his lips, he knew with bone-deep certainty that this was what he wanted.
“Marry me,” he said.
Sunny
“Marry me.”
Liam’s words were suspended in the air between them like a fragile soap bubble, shimmering and unexpected. Sunny stared at him, certain she’d misheard. The enormity of the night’s revelations — her planned escape, the pregnancy test, their emotional reconnection — had already left her emotionally raw. Now this?
“What?” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the gentle patter of rain against the windows.
Liam’s eyes — those same piercing eyes that had intimidated her during their first interview — now held nothing but vulnerability and hope as he repeated the words with quiet certainty.
“Marry me. Be my wife. Be a mother to our children — all of them.”
A kaleidoscope of emotions whirled through Sunny’s chest: confusion, disbelief, longing, fear. Her fingers instinctively moved to her stomach, where their child was growing — the tiny life that had almost prompted her to flee into the night.
“Liam, you can’t — this isn’t — we need to think about this,” she stammered, struggling to process what was happening. Was this real? Was he proposing simply because of the baby?
“Iamthinking,” he insisted, taking her hands in his larger ones. “More clearly than I have in a very long time.”
The warmth of his touch anchored her as memories cascaded through her mind— the countless foster homes where she’d never belonged, the families who had returned her like defective merchandise, the stepfather whose death had left her adrift once more. Always the outsider looking in, always temporary, never quite enough to keep.
And now Liam — solid, complicated Liam — was offering her everything she’d secretly yearned for since childhood: permanence, family, home.
“I know this seems sudden,” he continued, his deep voice gentle. “But nothing about our situation has been conventional. And I’m not proposing just because of the baby.”
She searched his face for any hesitation, any sign that this was duty rather than desire.
“The baby is a blessing, an unexpected miracle,” Liam explained, his words measured and sincere. “But my feelings for you existed long before tonight. I’ve been fighting them, denying them, telling myself it was too soon, too complicated. That I wasn’t ready.”
His calloused palm cupped her cheek, the tenderness of the gesture almost undoing her completely. “The truth is, I’m terrified of losing you. When I thought you’d left tonight, it felt like losing Kate all over again — like having the ground ripped out from under me.”
Sunny leaned into his touch, a tear slipping down her cheek. “I was so scared to tell you about the baby,” she admitted. “I thought it would be the final straw, the thing that made everything fall apart.”
The duffle bag still sat by her feet, a reminder of what nearly was.
“Instead, it’s the thing that’s finally made everything clear,” Liam replied, his eyes never leaving hers. “The team, the media, the fans — none of it matters compared to what we’ve built here. You, me, and the girls. Our family.”
Family.
The word resonated deep in Sunny’s soul. How many nights had she lain awake instrange beds as a child, conjuring imaginary parents who would claim her as their own? How many birthday candles had she blown out, wishing for the same thing year after year?
“Do you really mean that?” she asked, her voice breaking. “After everything you’ve been through, you want to start over? With me?”
“Not start over,” Liam corrected, his thumb gently wiping away a tear from her cheek. “Continue. Build on what we already have.”
