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We were standing in front of my childhood home.
The paint was fresh now. The porch swing had been repaired. Someone had coaxed the old hydrangeas back to life.
“How—” I breathed.
“I bought it,” Elias said softly. “Quietly. Off-market. I knew it mattered to you.”
I turned to him, stunned. “Why?”
“Because this house watched you become who you are. And because I wanted to give a piece of that girl back to the woman you’ve become.”
Tears blurred my vision as he stepped back, reached into his pocket, and dropped to one knee.
The ring was stunning—an antique oval diamond set in a halo of rubies. But it wasn’t the stone that made me gasp. It was the engraving I saw inside the band when he turned it toward me.
You are my fire.
“I love you, Vivienne Laveau,” he said, voice steady. “Exactly as you are. Untamed. Unapologetic. Fierce as hell. I don’t want to quiet your wildness—I want to walk beside it. I want to keep doing what we’re doing. Helping people. Making the world a little safer for the ones who get left behind. But more than that, I want to build a life with you. One that honors your past and fights for your future.”
I sank to my knees. My hands framed his face.
“Yes,” I whispered, before he even asked. “God, yes.”
He slid the ring onto my finger. It fit like it had always belonged.
And in that moment, I understood something I hadn’t before.
I’d always thought my need for adrenaline made me broken. Reckless.
But it didn’t. It made me hungry. Hungry for justice. For truth. For a life that meant something.
Elias had simply given me a new way to chase it.
With purpose. With balance. With love.
I would always be a little wild. But I wasn’t lost anymore. And with my mother safe, my sister by my side, and Elias with me for whatever came next?—
I was finally, fully, home in the world.
We sat together on the porch swing, the one that creaked when I was twelve and still did now, and let the moment stretch. The city hummed around us—heat rising off the pavement, cicadas buzzing like gossiping old women, someone’s saxophone crooning from a block away.
Elias brushed a thumb over the back of my hand. “So,” he said casually, “should we live here?”
I blinked, surprised by the question. Then I laughed. “You’re serious?”
He raised a brow. “You love this place.”
“I do,” I said softly. “But it’s a memory, not a plan.”
We were quiet for a beat, then I added, “I think we stay at Dominion Hall for now.”
Elias nodded, not a trace of disappointment on his face. “Then that’s what we do.”
“I haven’t even gotten to know everyone there very well,” I said, glancing down at the ring still catching sunlight on my hand. “It still feels like your place. Not ours.”
He turned to face me, earnest. “They love you, Red. They do. You’ll get to know them. You’ll see. And when we’re ready, we’ll build something of our own. Not because we have to, but because we want to.”
A breeze swept through, warm and forgiving, rustling the hydrangeas like they were nodding in agreement.