solana

Roman

The night was quiet. The kind of quiet that usually settled me, but tonight it felt too loud. My mind wouldn't shut up, and the weight of the small velvet box in my hand might as well have been a brick pressing against my chest.

I sat on the steps outside the house, back hunched, elbows resting on my knees. I'd been rolling the ring between my fingers for what felt like an hour now, just watching the way it caught the soft shimmer of the porch light. Every time I tried to rehearse it in my head, the words came out wrong.

wrong.

"Solana," I whispered, "you make me whole. Will you—"

No. Too cliché. Too... polished.

I looked down at the ring again, the stone catching a faint flicker of moonlight.

"What the hell do I even say?" I murmured to myself, running a hand through my hair. "Solana, you're everything. My fire, my calm. My goddamn heartbeat. Marry me?"

I shook my head. Too stiff. Too scripted.

"Or what? 'Hey, remember when you almost died and I lost my mind? Wanna sign up for a lifetime of that chaos?'"

I let out a breathy laugh under my breath. "Yeah, real smooth, Roman."

I let out a breath, jaw clenched tight as I rubbed my eyes. "Come on, Roman. You've stared death in the face, burned down empires, and this is what gets your heart racing?"

I scoffed under my breath. I felt ridiculous. Helpless.

I wanted it to be perfect. Not just romantic—but ours. And maybe that was what scared me. That I couldn't put into words what she meant to me without falling short.

Then her voice cut through the quiet.

"You always talk to yourself?"

I froze.

My head turned slowly, and there she was—standing barefoot in the doorway, wrapped in my oversized T-shirt, sleepy-eyed but awake enough to catch the damn moment I'd been trying to keep under wraps.

Shit.

I didn't say anything at first, just cursed silently as I closed my hand around the ring box and dropped it into my hoodie pocket. Too late. She saw it. I could already feel the panic rising in my chest.

She padded over and sat beside me, close enough that her leg brushed mine. I didn't look at her. Couldn't.

"You weren't supposed to see that," I muttered, voice rough. "I ruined it."

She tilted her head toward me, gentle smile tugging at her lips. "You didn't ruin anything."

I let out a humorless laugh, fingers dragging through my hair. "Yeah, I did. I had this whole plan. I asked your parents, was gonna wait for the right moment, do it right—for once, I wanted something to go right."

I felt her fingers wrap around my wrist, grounding me.

"Roman," she said softly, "I'll pretend I never saw it coming."

I finally looked at her then—those warm eyes, her sleepy smile, the way she leaned into me like she always belonged there. My throat tightened.

"I wanted it to be a surprise," I admitted. "You deserve that. You deserve something soft, something beautiful. Not... this." I gestured vaguely to myself, the box, the night. "Not me fumbling at two in the morning like an idiot."

She didn't flinch. Didn't pull away. Just reached into my pocket and slowly pulled the box back out, resting it in her palm without opening it.

"You want me to act surprised when it happens?" she asked with a little grin.