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"What?"

I take her hand.

Her brow furrows.

"Everett—"

I go down on one knee.

The gallery doesn't go quiet all at once. It happens in a wave—first the people closest to us, then the ones by the champagne, then Everly, whose gasp is loud enough to qualify as a sound effect.

Aria stares down at me.

"What are you doing?" she whispers.

"Something I should have done the first time."

I pull the box from my pocket. Open it. It’s the wedding band to go with the ring that I gave her all those months ago.

Aria’s hand stretches over her heart immediately. She wasn’t expecting this.

"Ten months ago, you agreed to marry a man you could barely stand. A man who wouldn't tell you his coffee order to keep you at arm's length and fired you when he knew he was losing the battle to keep his distance. You married me for a trust document and to protect your father. There was never anything in it for you," I say. "And then somehow, miraculously, I did something right in my life and I convinced you to fall in love with me, though I didn't deserve it. And now I’m kneeling in front of you in this art gallery, in front of our family and friends, because Everly was right when she said that I would regret the way I didn’t get down on one knee and proposed all those months ago. She was right. I should have done all of this the right way. From the beginning."

A wet, broken laugh comes out of Aria.

Somewhere behind me, Everly whisper-shouts, "I KNEW IT."

I look up at my wife. My hand isn't shaking. My voice is.

"Marry me again," I say. "Not because we have to. Because I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I want you to know that I chose this. I chose you, and I want you to get the chance to choose me too. A chance to choose every version of us that's coming—the good, the difficult, the part where we share pistachio ice cream because the bird took one of ours."

Aria chuckles.

"The engagement ring was the contract and now this infinitely ring represents us choosing forever. Both decisions shape us. Will you do this with me? Will you agree to forever?"

She laughs again. Tears now. She doesn't wipe them.

"Yes," she says. "Obviously yes."

I slide the ring on beside the first one. Two bands on one finger. The contract and the choice.

When I stand, she pulls me down and kisses me, and the gallery applauds, and Zayne whistles so loudly that Wes says, "For the love of God," and Henry is crying in his chair and not hiding it, and Everly has her phone out already which means this will be everywhere by morning and I don't care.

I don't care about any of it. Just her.

Aria pulls back, face flushed, eyes bright, and opens her mouth to say something.

Then she stops. I feel it before I understand what just happened. My shoes are soaked.

We both look down at the same time.

"Everett."

"Please tell me that’s from a water bottle."

She shakes her head. "My water just broke."

Fuck. We have to go. Now.