Page 134 of Chasing the Sun

He looked older.

She looked like home.

They looked like they belonged to each other. Not in the way people say when there was shared blood—but in the way souls just know. Watching them, I had a lump in my throat and no idea what to do with it.

I made my way over just as Levi was biting into a cinnamon doughnut the size of his face.

“You have one?” he asked me, powdered sugar already dusting his hoodie.

I shook my head. “Waiting for the cider slush line to die down.”

Elodie grinned up at me, her face flushed. “You’re gonna be waiting forever. It’s chaos over there.”

“That’s what happens when your secret recipe gets out,” I said, nudging her.

Levi wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “You guys are gross.”

But there was a smile hiding in the corners of his mouth, and I caught the way he lingered when Elodie pulled him in for a hug.

“You sticking around for the bonfire?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe. Or I might go hang at Hayes’s for a bit. Thought I’d give the two of you a break before someone makes me sing ‘Kumbaya’ or whatever.”

Elodie ruffled his curls, and he ducked away with a grin.

After he wandered off, she leaned into me. “He’s okay.”

“Yeah.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “He is.”

We stood in silence for a beat, watching the sun dip lower behind the orchard, turning the sky to fire.

Then I reached for her hand.

“You trust me?”

She turned to look at me, brow lifted. “Always.”

“Come with me.”

I led her past the cider tents and the bonfire pit, past the barn and down the gravel path that wound through the trees. The farther we went, the quieter it got. Just the crunch of leaves underfoot, the hum of crickets waking up in the grass, the crackle of a fire in the distance.

She looked up at the sky and smiled, soft andsecret. And for a split second I almost backed out. Because how the hell do you give someone the world when they’ve already handed it to you first? But I knew, deep down, the perfect moment I’d been waiting for was something I was already living. Every moment with her was perfect.

When we reached the old oak—the one she loved, with the crooked spine and the wooden swing—I stopped.

She looked around. “Cal?”

“I’ve been trying to find the right moment,” I said, “to do this.”

“To do what?”

I dropped to one knee.

Elodie froze.

And then her hands flew to her mouth, eyes already glassy with tears.

“Elodie Darling,” I said, my voice low and steady despite the way my heart was trying to punch a hole through my ribs, “this land might be what brought us together, but you’re what made it matter.”