Chapter 42
Micah
I just took Harper Mitchell to Angelo’s for our first official date.
And I’m not ready for the night to end.
Which is why, when I pull away from the curb with her in the passenger seat, I don’t head toward her apartment. I head toward the other side of Dallas. The quiet side. The side I haven’t taken her to yet.
“Where are we going?” she asks, watching the familiar streets give way to less familiar ones.
“It’s a surprise.”
She turns to look at me. “You already did the surprise thing tonight. Angelo’s was the surprise.”
“That was the first surprise.”
“There’s a limit, Micah. You can’t just keep surprising people indefinitely. It’s a lot of pressure.”
“You’ll survive.”
She crosses her arms, but she’s smiling. I can see it in my periphery, that smile she gets when she’s pretending to be annoyed and isn’t, the one I’ve been cataloguing without meaning to for two years.
I make the last turn and pull into the parking lot.
“Why are we at a Chinese restaurant for dessert?”
The sign above the door is not impressive. The parking lot has exactly four other cars in it. The neon light in the window is the kind that flickers every few seconds like it’s considering retirement.
“Because they have the best vanilla ice cream in Dallas,” I say.
She stares at the sign. Then at me. “Vanilla ice cream.”
“Yes.”
“From a Chinese restaurant.”
“Yes.”
“Micah.” She turns fully toward me. “We just came from Angelo’s. Angelo, who makes his grandmother’s pasta from scratch and imports his cheese specifically. And now you’re taking me to a strip mall Chinese restaurant for vanilla ice cream.”
“Correct.”
“That’s insane.”
“You haven’t tried the ice cream yet.”
She looks back at the flickering sign. I watch her face cycle through skepticism, curiosity, and then that particular Harper expression where she’s already decided she’s going to do the thing but needs a moment to pretend she hasn’t.
“Fine,” she says. “But I want it on the record that I had concerns.”
“Noted.” I open my door. “That’s also what you said at Angelo’s.”
“And I was wrong at Angelo’s.” She gets out of the truck. “This is different.”
“It really isn’t.”
The woman behind the counter knows me, which Harper clocks immediately with an expression of complete delight.
I order two vanilla ice creams in paper cups without looking at the menu, which makes Harper make a sound somewhere between a laugh and disbelief, and four minutes later we’re back outside in the cool April air with plastic spoons and paper cups and the quiet Dallas night opening up around us.
Harper takes one bite.
She stops walking.
“Okay,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“This is so good.”
“I know.”
“How?” She looks at the cup. “How is this the best vanilla ice cream I’ve ever had? It’s vanilla. It’s the most boring flavor in existence. How is it doing this?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I found this place by accident three years ago after a late church event, and I’ve never been able to explain it. I just know it’s the best.”
She takes another bite. Closes her eyes briefly.
“Okay,” she says again. “You win. You win completely.”
“I usually do.”
She points her spoon at me. “Do not get smug about the ice cream.”
“I’m not smug. I’m satisfied.”
“That’s the same thing.”
We fall into step beside each other, moving away from the parking lot toward the quieter street that runs alongside it.
It’s the kind of block that empties out at night—a hardware store, a dry cleaner, a little stretch of sidewalk with old brick buildings on one side and a narrow alley that opens up toward the city skyline on the other.
No crowd. No noise except our footsteps and the distant hum of Dallas being Dallas.
It’s exactly what I wanted.
She finishes her ice cream and holds the empty cup in both hands, and I watch her from the corner of my eye the way I’ve been watching her for two years. Except tonight it’s different. Tonight I don’t have to pretend I’m not looking.
We toss our empty cups in a trash can and stop at the mouth of a narrow alley between two old brick buildings; it belongs in a different decade. The city glows faintly at the far end, just enough light to see by, warm and low. Quiet. Nobody here but us.
Harper leans back against the brick wall, tilting her face up toward the sky.
I lean against the wall beside her, close enough that our shoulders nearly touch.
For a moment, neither of us says anything.
Then she says quietly. “Can I tell you something?”
“Always.”
She looks at the sky, not at me. “I didn’t know what real faith was supposed to feel like until you.
” She pauses. “I grew up in church. I knew all the right words. All the right behaviors. I could perform Christianity better than almost anyone. But it was all surface. I was checking boxes for my parents. For the version of myself I thought I was supposed to be.”
I don’t say anything. I just listen, the way she once told me nobody did.
“You were the first person who made me think it could actually be real,” she says. “Not rules. Not performance. Just...actually knowing God.” She finally looks at me. “You did that. You pointed me there when you didn’t have to. When it cost you something.”
“It didn’t cost me anything,” I say.
“Micah.”
“Walking alongside you was never a cost.”
She holds my gaze for a long moment. “You know what I mean.”
I do. I do know what she means. And she deserves the honest answer.
“Okay,” I say. “I have a confession to make.”
She waits.
“Do you remember the night of the gala? When you’d had too much champagne and I drove you home?”
“Vividly. Against my will, but vividly.”
“You fell asleep.” I look at the city at the end of the alley, finding my words.
“And I sat there for a while. Just praying. Because I was already in it, already completely gone for you. And I knew you were trying to get back with someone else, and I was trying to figure out how to just—” I stop.
Start again. “I prayed a pretty specific prayer that night.”
She’s very still beside me.
“I prayed,” I say slowly, “Lord, let it be me.”
The silence between us is the softest kind.
“That’s it,” I say. “No fancy language. No theological depth. Just that. Four words. Every night for a long time.”
Harper is quiet for a moment. When she speaks, her voice is distinct. Lower. “You prayed that for how long?”
“A while.”
“How long is a while, Micah?”
“Almost two months. Give or take.”
She exhales. Looks at me with an expression I feel all the way through. “You prayed let it be me the entire time we were fake dating while acting completely normal around me.”
“I didn’t always act completely normal.”
“You acted completely normal.”
She turns to face me fully, her back against the brick, and looks up at me the way she did on the park bench this morning, except now there’s nothing uncertain in it. Just her. Just this.
She’s quiet for a moment after I finish. Just looking at me with that expression I still can’t fully read, the one that makes me want to say everything and nothing at the same time.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Go for it.”
“Is it weird?” I hold her gaze. “That I prayed that specifically. For that long. About you.” I pause. “Serial killer vibes?”
She bursts into a laugh that isn’t graceful or contained, and that I would do basically anything to keep hearing for the rest of my life.
“Micah Sanders,” she says, still laughing. “Did you just use my own bit against me?”
“I’m asking a legitimate question.”
“You quite literally just told me you prayed let it be me for several months and your follow up is whether that gives off serial killer energy?”
“It’s a valid concern.”
“It’s not weird. It’s actually—” she stops. Like she’s deciding whether to say the real thing. Then she does. “It’s the most anyone has ever quietly, consistently, patiently been in my corner without me even knowing it.”
Something in my chest goes completely still.
“So no,” she says again, quieter. “Not serial killer vibes.” The corner of her mouth pulls up. “I love that you’re obsessed with me.”
I let that land for exactly one second.
“Good,” I say. “Because I really am.”
Then she reaches up, grabs the front of my shirt, and pulls me in.
And I kiss her in a dark alley in Dallas with nobody watching and no room full of people to perform for and nothing between us except the truth we’ve been carrying toward each other for two years.
It’s not careful. It’s not calibrated. It’s the kind of kiss that happens when two people have been patient long enough and finally don’t have to be anymore.
When we finally pull back, her hands are still in my hair and mine are on her face, and she’s looking at me with bright eyes and slightly uneven breathing and the best expression I have ever seen on another human being.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
“That was—”
“Yeah.”
She laughs, dropping her forehead against my chest, and I wrap my arms around her and hold her there in the alley with the city glowing at the end of it and the night wide open above us.
Thank You, I think. Not for the first time today. Not for the last time in my life. For letting it be me.