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Dalton is standing by the car. Not leaning against it in his usual careful, doctorly way. Not pretending this is casual. He’s in a dark suit, tie straight, hair behaving, looking entirely too handsome to be trusted, and there’s something so openly tense in his face that my heart immediately trips over itself.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

He takes one step toward me. Then another.

And then, to my absolute astonishment, he drops to one knee.

I stop dead. Actually stop breathing.

“Dalton.”

“I know,” he says quickly. “I know this is not subtle. I know there are probably more elegant ways to do this. I couldn’t think of one, and if I waited until I had the elegant version, I’d still be talking myself out of it at eighty.”

I stare at him.

He’s holding a ring.

A real ring. Not a family heirloom in a velvet box with ten thousand years of history and pressure in it. Just a beautiful ring in his hand and the most terrified expression I have ever seen on his face.

“I love you,” he says.

There is no crowd. No audience. No orchestra hiding in the bushes. Just him and me and the city moving around us, and suddenly that feels so much bigger than spectacle ever could.

“I love you,” he says again, steadier this time. “I love you when you’re furious, when you’re stubborn, when you’re making terrible decisions and then defending them like a lawyer on fire. I love you when you laugh at me, when you ignore my medical advice, when you look at me like I’m the last sensible person in the room even though we both know I’m not.”

A laugh escapes me then, wet and helpless.

He smiles briefly and keeps going. “I love you enough to know I don’t want a version of my life that happens without you in it. I don’t want a cleaner one, or a safer one, or one that looks better from the outside. I want yours. I want this. I want the child you’re carrying, and the one after that if we’re lucky, and every stupid argument and impossible conversation in between.”

Tears are fully in my eyes now.

“Dalton—”

“So marry me,” he says, and now his voice breaks just slightly, enough to ruin me. “Marry me because I can’t bear another version of this story where I keep leaving and you keep surviving me. Marry me because I’m done pretending I know how to love you halfway.”

I laugh and cry at the same time, which is disgusting, and put a hand over my mouth because otherwise I will start making actual nonsense sounds in public.

He looks up at me, still kneeling, still holding the ring like his whole future is balanced in his hand. “Well?” he asks.

I stare at him for one long second.

Then I nod too fast and say, “Yes.”

His whole face changes. Relief and joy and disbelief all at once, hitting so hard he actually bows his head for a second like the answer had weight.

Then he stands. The ring goes on my finger somehow. I don’t remember exactly how because the second he’s upright I’m laughing and crying into his shirt while he holds me like I’m the only thing he has ever meant to reach for.

He kisses me. Long enough to be inappropriate on a public sidewalk, not long enough for either of us. When he finally pulls back, his forehead rests against mine.

“You have destroyed me professionally,” I whisper.

He huffs out a laugh. “That seems dramatic.”

“You proposed outside my former contractual tormentor’s house.”

“Yes.”

“That is objectively unhinged.”