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The ball snaps. Bodies collide. Alexei shoves through two guys who are trying to get past him, his arms driving forward, his legs churning, and it’s violent and beautiful and terrifying all at once. I can hear the collisions from up here—or maybe I’m imagining that, but it feels real, the thud of bodies meeting at full speed. I wince, waiting, watching…
Weston heaves the ball. It spirals through the air, arcing under the stadium lights, and the entire suite goes still—Tracey mid-scream, Valerie frozen mid-pace, me with both hands pressed against the glass.
The receiver catches it.
In the end zone.
For one second, nothing happens. Then the stadium detonates. Absolutely explodes.
The noise is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced—not just loud but physical, a wall of sound that vibrates through the glass and the floor and my chest. Tracey screams so hard her voice cracks. Valerie is jumping, literally jumping, grabbing my arm and shaking me. Ana has her hands over her face and she’s crying.
“WE WON!” Tracey screams.
“We won?” I’m yelling too, not entirely sure when I started. “We won!”
“WE WON THE WHOLE THING, RY!”
I’m laughing and crying and my hands are shaking, and I don’t fully understand what just happened in football terms, but I understand the scoreboard, and I understand the tears streaming down every face in this suite, and I understand that the man I love just won the biggest game of his career.
On the field, the team swarms together—helmets coming off, guys grabbing each other, jumping, shouting. Confetti starts falling from somewhere, gold and navy, catching the light like glitter. The noise hasn’t stopped. I don’t think it’s going to stop.
I spot Alexei. He’s pulled his helmet off, and even from up here I can see his grin—wide, wild, the kind of smile I’ve only seen glimpses of at home. He hugs Weston, lifting him off the ground, and they’re shouting something at each other I can’t hear.
Then he turns toward the suite.
He’s looking for me. Scanning the rows, the glass, and even from this distance, I feel the moment his eyes find mine.
He gestures with his hand. Get down here.
I don’t remember deciding to move. One second I’m in the suite, the next I’m running down the concrete steps in boots that were not designed for running, pushing past people, flashing the field pass that I didn’t think I’d need, and then I’m through a tunnel and on the sideline, and confetti is falling on my hair and my shoulders, and the grass is bright green under the lights, and Alexei is walking toward me.
He’s sweaty and dirty and grass-stained, his hair matted to his forehead, and he looks like he just went to war, and he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I love him more than I can even comprehend.
“Baby!” His voice cuts through the noise. “Get over here.”
I run. Full-out run across the sideline and into his arms, and he catches me and lifts me off the ground, and we’re laughing and crying at the same time, his face buried in my neck, my legs wrapped around him.
“You did it,” I say into his ear, barely able to hear myself.
“We did.” He pulls back enough to look at me, his hands on my face, his eyes bright and wet. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
He’s looking at me. Really looking—not just a post-game adrenaline look, not the I’m-so-happy look. Something else. Something steadier and more deliberate, deeper, like he’s standing at the edge of something he planned and the moment is finally here.
He sets me down, then he goes down on one knee.
The stadium doesn’t go quiet—it’s way too chaotic for that—but something happens in my brain where the noise just . . . recedes. Like someone turned the volume knob all the way down, and it’s just him. Kneeling on the grass in his dirty uniform, holding both my hands, looking up at me with those blue eyes.
My brain stalls.
Wait.
Wait, is he—
He nods to someone behind me. Ana appears—when did Ana get down here?—and places something small in his palm. He closes his fingers around it and looks back up at me.
“I love you,” he says, and his voice is rough and steady and the most certain I’ve ever heard him sound. “You and Ella. I want us to be a family. Not the kind we’ve been playing at—the real kind. The permanent kind.” He squeezes my hands. “Will you marry me?”
