I shook my head.“Why?”

She grinned wider, dragging me forward. She pulled back the curtain.

Glitter and Chester stood beside the inflatable throne Layana had promised me would be here. Oscar’s brothers were here, too.

“What is this?” I spun around to my dad, who was smiling and backing away from the tent’s door flaps.

I felt like I was floating, like this whole thing had to be a dream.

Oscar appeared from behind the throne.

I put my hands over my mouth, unable to believe he was really here. My heart was pounding so hard, so fast.

He was wearing a perfectly fitted suit, with a pink tie the color of my Ralphie pajamas.

I laughed, confused and elated to finally see him.

He smiled wide at me. “Morgan—”

I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I know about how you worry about being abandoned, and then I did that to you, and it was wrong. I got scared. It was all so much and…and….”

My chest constricted and he stroked a hand through my hair.

He felt so freaking good, like swimming in a vat of ice cream after wandering without water for a week in the Sahara.

“It wasn’t fair of me to expect you to take everything that happened in stride,” he said. “I messed up and I snapped at you, and it was the last thing I wanted to do. What I should have said was that I loved you and I understood that it would take time for you to digest—”

“Stop. Back up.” I pulled back to look at his face, at his beautifully different eyes, one green and one brown, both filled with adoration. All the breath whooshed out of my chest. I whispered, “Say it again.”

“I love you.”

Those three little words filled me up until my heart was brimming.

“I love you, too,” I said. “And I will never ever run away again.”

He kissed me so sweetly, my legs went weak. He tasted like sunshine and cotton candy, like hope and promise, like the future I hadn’t dared dream was possible.

And then he dropped down to the ground, apparently also feeling weak from our dizzying kiss.

Or at least that was what I thought until I realized he was down on one knee. And he pulled a small bag from his pocket and offered it up to me.

Uncle Momma’s Pancake Emporium’s Blueberry Delightswas written on a sticker sealing the bag shut.

“Blueberry candies from the restaurant where we met,” he said.

Sebastian set a box beside Oscar.

Oscar pulled out a Pac-Man stuffed animal.

“A plush from the arcade,” he said.

I took it, unable to find words as tears swelled in my eyes and a smile pulled so hard on my face my cheeks burned.

Finally, he pulled a jewelry box from his pocket.

“Morgan Montrose, will you marry me?”