Epilogue #2
His mouth lifts. “Still tears.”
I set my food aside and crawl the few inches between us until I’m half in his lap, half tangled around him. His arms come around me immediately, no hesitation, no surprise. Like this too is muscle memory now. Like loving me has become instinct.
Maybe it has.
I press my face into his neck.
“You make it very hard not to marry you on the spot,” I mumble.
He goes still.
It’s so immediate that if I weren’t this close to him, I might’ve missed it. But I feel it—the subtle lock of his shoulders, the pause in his breathing.
I lift my head.
His expression is unreadable for exactly one second too long.
Then he smiles, but it’s a little crooked. “Good to know.”
I blink at him.
Interesting.
“Gray.”
“Hm?”
I lean back enough to see his face fully. “Why did you just make that face?”
“What face?”
“That face.”
He shakes his head too fast. “No face.”
I stare.
He stares back.
Then, because I know him, because I know the exact set of his mouth when he’s trying not to give something away, my eyes narrow.
“Oh my god.”
His brows lift. “That’s dramatic.”
“Do not dramatic me right now.” I grab his hoodie strings. “Grayson Bennett.”
He catches my wrists, laughing under his breath. “Harlow Mercer.”
Something electric and bright starts climbing through me.
“Do you have a ring?”
His laughter stops.
Not in a bad way.
In a caught way.
My mouth falls open. “You do.”
He exhales, long and slow, and tips his head back against the couch cushion like the ceiling might save him. “I cannot believe this is how this is happening.”
I make a strangled sound that is not dignified. “There is a ring?”
He lowers his gaze to mine again, and now he’s the one who looks a little undone. A little vulnerable. It does something wild and tender to my heart.
“There is a ring,” he admits.
I stare at him.
He stares at me.
Then I say, very carefully, “Why is there a ring if you weren’t planning to use it?”
His hand slides to my hip, holding me there like he needs the contact. “I am planning to use it.”
A ridiculous amount of joy collides with a ridiculous amount of nerves inside me at once.
“Tonight?”
He huffs a laugh that sounds almost disbelieving. “Not like this.”
“Wow,” I say softly. “You had a plan.”
“I had a very good plan.”
My smile breaks loose before I can stop it. “Tell me.”
“No.”
“Gray.”
“No, because you already ruined it.”
“I did not ruin it. I streamlined it.”
He gives me a look. “You interrogated me into confessing I bought an engagement ring.”
I try to look repentant and fail completely. “That’s kind of romantic, actually.”
He laughs then, really laughs, and the sound loosens something in the room.
The nerves don’t disappear, exactly. They just shift into something sweeter.
More certain.
I touch his face, tracing the line of his jaw with my fingertips. “You were really going to ask me?”
He leans into my hand. “Yeah.”
“And you thought I might say yes?”
His eyes hold mine.
There is not a single ounce of hesitation in him when he answers.
“I know you will.”
That’s it.
That’s the thing that undoes me.
Not arrogance. Not an assumption.
Certainty.
The kind built slowly, carefully, over every conversation and conflict and airport goodbye and late-night phone call and hard truth and ordinary Tuesday. The kind earned by showing up again and again until love becomes the most dependable thing in the room.
I swallow hard.
“Then ask me,” I whisper.
His expression changes.
The teasing slips away. The laughter softens out of his mouth. What’s left is so open it nearly steals my breath.
“You sure?”
I nod.
“Yes.”
He studies me for half a second, like he’s making absolutely certain I mean it, then gently shifts me off his lap and rises to his feet.
My pulse goes completely feral.
He disappears down the hallway, and I hear the soft slide of a drawer opening in the bedroom. I press a hand to my mouth and immediately start crying, which is humiliating but also unavoidable at this point.
“Happy tears,” I call toward the hallway.
His laugh carries back to me. “Still tears.”
When he returns, there’s a small velvet box in his hand.
For one suspended second, everything in me goes quiet.
The apartment is warm. Rain taps against the windows. There are half-unpacked boxes stacked by the wall and takeout containers on the coffee table and a skating program playing silently in the background.
It is not a grand gesture.
It is not candlelight or rose petals or some perfectly staged moment on a rooftop overlooking the city.
It is ours.
And somehow that makes it better than anything I could have imagined.
Grayson stops in front of me, looking wrecked and steady all at once.
“I had a speech,” he says.
I laugh through my tears. “You still can.”
He glances down at the ring box in his hand. “I definitely cannot do the whole thing now.”
“Yes, you can.”
He draws in a breath.
Then he drops to one knee.
The sight of it hits me so hard I put both hands over my mouth.
His eyes never leave mine.
“Harlow,” he says, and my name in his voice sounds like a prayer and a promise and every safe place I’ve ever known. “I loved you before I knew what to do with it. Before anything was easy. Before either of us knew what this would look like.”
A tear slips down my cheek.
He smiles a little when he sees it, but his own eyes are bright too.
“You changed my life in all the best ways. In the real way. The way that matters. You made every place feel more like home. You made the future feel like something I wanted instead of something I was just working toward.” His voice roughens.
“And every version of my life that makes sense—every one I want—has you in it.”
I am fully crying now. There’s no point fighting it.
He opens the box.
The ring is delicate and beautiful, a round diamond set in a thin gold band with tiny stones catching the light on either side. It’s elegant without being fussy. Soft, classic, perfect.
Perfect.
“I was going to wait until this weekend,” he says, smiling shakily. “Maybe take you somewhere with a view. Pretend I was being smooth.”
I laugh through a sob.
“But honestly?” His gaze holds mine, unwavering. “This feels more like us. You moving into our place. Me, standing in the middle of the life we built and asking if I can keep you in it forever.”
My heart feels too big for my body.
“Harlow Mercer,” he says, voice low and sure, “will you marry me?”
“Yes.”
The answer flies out of me before he’s even finished speaking.
“Yes,” I say again, laughing and crying all at once now. “Yes, obviously. Yes.”
His eyes close for one tiny second, relief washing across his face so openly it wrecks me all over again. Then he stands, hands shaking just enough that I notice, and slides the ring onto my finger.
It fits perfectly.
Of course it does.
When I look back up at him, he’s smiling in that stunned, beautiful way people do when something they wanted with their whole heart has actually happened.
I throw myself at him.
He catches me with a startled laugh, arms locking around me as I kiss him everywhere I can reach—his mouth, his cheek, the corner of his jaw.
“You had a ring,” I keep saying like an idiot.
He laughs against my lips. “I did.”
For a second, I can’t do anything but look at it.
Not because of what it is.
Because of what it means.
The girl I used to be wouldn’t have known how to stand inside a moment like this. She would have braced for it. Questioned it. Looked for the hidden sharp edge.
This version of me doesn’t.
This version lets herself have it.
Lets herself be loved.
Lets herself believe in the kind of future that once felt too dangerous to name.
Grayson brushes away the tears still damp on my cheeks. “What are you thinking?”
I look up at him.
“That I get to marry you.”
His smile turns soft and wrecked at the same time. “Yeah, you do.”
I laugh, shaky and full. “You sound very pleased with yourself.”
“I am.”
Then his gaze drops to the ring on my finger, and when he looks back at me, there’s that same certainty again. That same quiet, unshakable knowing.
“I’m going to love you for the rest of my life, Harlow.”
Emotion rises so fast it nearly steals my breath.
I slide my arms around his waist and hold on.
“I know,” I whisper.
And I do.
Outside, the rain keeps falling.
Inside, our half-unpacked apartment glows warm around us—boxes and takeout and all the evidence of a life in progress. A life that isn’t perfect, or finished, or polished into something neat.
Just real.
Real, and ours.
THE END