The doors at the far end of the gym open.
And there he is.
No helmet. No gear. Just Jordan, in a jacket and jeans, walking across the gym floor toward me the way he came through that wall of flashing lights on the interstate. Like he grew there. Like he's been walking toward me his whole life and only needed me to hold still long enough to let him arrive.
The gym loses its collective mind. Students scream, clap and whoop. The sound is deafening and I can’t wipe the smile off my face. Off to the side I catch a small red light and turn to see Noah Kim, filming. For the first time, I don't want to disappear out of the frame.
Jordan stops a foot away and the whole gym hushes. He doesn't reach for the mic. He just looks at me with those dimples that could stop traffic. "Hi, sweetheart."
"Hi… Jordan, what are you doing?" I breathe and my stomach trembles.
"I’m doing something I've wanted to do since I looked at a valley with my whole life laid out in it and realized the only part that mattered was sitting next to me." He takes my hands.
Mine are shaking, and he covers them the way he always does. “What?” My lip quivers and I blink back tears.
This isn’t happening.
This is too good to be true.
But I blink, and he’s still there when I open my eyes.
He continues, "You walked into a burning building for a kid who wasn't yours to save. You are the bravest person I have ever met. I told you that on a tailgate, and I've told you every day since, and I'm going to keep telling you until I run out of days."
"Jordan—"
He grins and lets go of my hands. Then he goes down on one knee in the middle of the gym floor. Maya, beaming, presses a small box into his palm. I look around to see they are all in on it. The only surprised face in the house is mine. Somehow that makes it so much sweeter. Then the whole world goes quiet around Jordan and me the same way the valley did.
"Lana." His voice cracks right down the middle, and he lets it. "Marry me. Build a big life with me in this ridiculous, beautiful, small town. Let me make you breakfast and stand between you and the whole world. Let me read you only the good chapters. You are my favorite person. I want you to be my wife."
I spent my whole life sure I was a fire. Sure that everything good burned down around me, that I didn't get to keep a single bright thing. But here is this man who I love with all my heart, on his knee in a gym that burned and got built back better, asking to keep me.
It’s my turn to keep something good and I will never take that for granted.
"Yes." It comes out broken and certain all at once. "Yes!Yes, Jordan, of course, yes."
The gym explodes.
He's on his feet and I'm in his arms before the ring is even on my finger. Then he's laughing into my hair and I'm crying into the jacket that still, after everything, smells like smoke and pine. A thousand kids are stomping the bleachers. Lance's whistle cuts clean over all of it. Maya is sobbing openly and pretending she isn't.
Jordan slides the ring onto my finger and it fits. Then he kisses me, right there in the middle of the gym, in front of the whole loud beautiful town. He lets the noise wash over both of us like he's got all the time in the world.
He pulls me flush against him and dips his mouth to my ear, his voice a low rumble only I can hear under all the screaming. "The second I get you alone tonight,fiancée, I'm taking my time with you all over again. Every. Single. Inch." Heat floods my cheeks—and somewhere a good deal lower—and I have to bite my lip to keep from grinning like a fool in front of three hundred teenagers.
When he pulls back, he keeps his forehead pressed to mine. "I told you I was never leaving," he murmurs.
"You did." I'm laughing and crying at once. "Inside a cabinet. In permanent marker."
"Damn right." His lips brush my forehead. "Come on, sweetheart. Let's go home."
The whole town is still on its feet, and that little red light is still glowing, catching every second of the first day of the rest of my life. Later—much later, when the gym has emptied and it's just us and the squeak of his boots on the polished floor—I'll tell him the other secret I've been keeping. The one that's only four weeks along and the size of a poppy seed. I'll watch the man who only ever wanted a family of his own come completely undone in the middle of an empty gym. But that's a story for tonight. Rightnow, I just let him hold me, and for the first time in my whole life, I don't count the exits.
The End
