“I’m down.”

Two words.

I looked at the message for several seconds.

Then I picked up the engagement bouquet.

Ethan frowned.

“Where are you going?”

“To meet my fiancé.”

The room went silent.

Ryan laughed first.

“What fiancé?”

I looked at him.

“The one who actually came.”

Ethan’s expression changed.

“Emma.”

I walked past him.

He caught my wrist.

“Enough.”

I looked down at his hand.

“Let go.”

Perhaps something in my face finally warned him that this wasn’t another argument I would eventually apologize for.

His fingers loosened.

I opened the door.

Behind me, Ethan said:

“If you walk out now, don’t expect me to chase you.”

I stopped.

For years, that sentence would have frightened me.

This time, I turned around and smiled.

“That’s the first promise you’ve made today that I hope you keep.”

Then I left.

The elevator doors opened downstairs.

And there he was.

Lucas Hale.

Black suit.

Dark coat still carrying drops of rain.

And in his hand—

a ring box.

My heart nearly stopped.

Lucas and I had known each other since university.

He had asked me out twice.

I rejected him twice.

The third time, three years ago, he hadn’t asked for a date.

He had asked something much more dangerous.

“If one day you get tired of waiting for Ethan to choose you, call me.”

I’d laughed.

“You make it sound like you’ll wait forever.”

Lucas had looked at me calmly.

“I won’t wait forever.”

Then he added:

“But I’ll answer if you call.”

After that, he moved abroad.

We barely spoke.

Until thirty minutes ago.

Now he was standing in the Starlight Hotel lobby.

I stared at him.

“You really came.”

“You gave me half an hour.”

He checked his watch.

“Twenty-three minutes.”

Despite everything, I laughed.

His eyes softened.

Then he noticed my face.

“What happened?”

I looked at the ring box.

“Before I tell you, I need to ask something.”

“Ask.”

“If I tell you this is partly anger, partly humiliation and partly me refusing to waste the ceremony my family prepared for…”

“I’ll believe you.”

“And you still came?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Lucas closed the ring box.

“Because you asked me to come.”

Simple.

No lesson.

No game.

No audience laughing behind my back.

Just an answer.

I swallowed.

“I’m not asking you to marry me today.”

“I know.”

I blinked.

“You know?”

“Emma, you’re furious.”

For the first time that afternoon, someone treated my feelings as reasonable.

Lucas continued:

“If you married me tonight, you’d wake up tomorrow wondering whether you chose me or just chose against Ethan.”

He slipped the ring box back into his pocket.

“So let’s not do that.”

My throat tightened.

“Then why bring a ring?”

A faint smile appeared.

“Because I’ve wanted to give it to you for three years.”

Before I could answer, Ethan’s voice came from behind us.

“Lucas?”

I turned.

Ethan stood at the bottom of the staircase.

His friends had followed him.

So had Sofia.

The moment Ethan recognized Lucas, his face became frighteningly still.

“What are you doing here?”

Lucas looked at him.

“Emma invited me.”

Ethan laughed.

“She invited you to my engagement party?”

“No,” I said.

“Mine.”

His eyes snapped toward me.

“Stop this.”

“I already did.”

I removed the bracelet Ethan had given me on our first anniversary.

I placed it in his hand.

Then the apartment key.

Then the key to his car.

His face slowly changed.

“Emma.”

“We’re finished.”

Ryan tried to laugh.

“Come on. You’re not seriously dumping him over a prank.”

Lucas looked at him.

“A prank?”

Nobody answered.

I did.

“They convinced me Ethan wanted to get engaged. Let me organize everything for a month. Invited my entire family. Then twenty minutes before the ceremony, they told me the engagement was fake.”

Lucas’s expression didn’t change much.

That was worse.

He looked at Ethan.

“You did that?”

Ethan shoved the bracelet into his pocket.

“This is between Emma and me.”

“No,” I said.

“It was between us when it was private.”

I glanced at his friends.

“You turned it into entertainment.”

At that moment, my mother appeared from the ballroom.

“Emma?”

She looked at Lucas.

Then Ethan.

Then the empty corridor behind him.

“Where are Ethan’s parents?”

Nobody spoke.

My mother understood.

Her face went pale.

I walked to her.

“Mom, there isn’t going to be an engagement.”

Her eyes filled instantly.

Not because of the money.

Not because of the guests.

Because she knew me.

She knew how seriously I had prepared.

“What did he do?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

Ethan finally seemed nervous.

“Mrs. Carter, this is a misunderstanding.”

My mother looked at him.

“You let my daughter invite our entire family to a fake engagement?”

He opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

Then Lucas stepped beside me.

“We don’t have to waste the evening.”

Everyone looked at him.

He turned to my mother.

“The food is prepared. The family is here. Emma’s relatives traveled a long way.”

Then he looked at me.

“Don’t let them turn your humiliation into the only memory of tonight.”

That was exactly what we did.

We canceled the engagement ceremony.

And held a family dinner instead.

I changed out of the engagement dress.

I removed the decorations with Ethan’s initials.

The thousand candy boxes stayed.

I had made them.

My family could eat them.

Lucas stayed.

Ethan didn’t.

Before leaving, he stopped beside me.

“You think Lucas actually wants you?”

I looked at him.

“He came.”

Three days later, Ethan appeared outside my apartment.

Flowers.

A diamond ring.

And, for the first time, his parents.

His mother looked mortified.

“We didn’t know about the party,” she told me.

Ethan’s father looked at his son with undisguised anger.

“He told us Emma canceled the engagement because she wasn’t ready.”

I wasn’t surprised.

Ethan stepped toward me.

“Fine.”

He opened the ring box.

“You wanted a real engagement?”

My stomach turned.

“Here.”

He actually got down on one knee.

“Marry me.”

I stared at him.

For years, that image had lived somewhere in my imagination.

Ethan kneeling.

A ring.

His parents beside him.

Everything official.

Everything real.

And I felt nothing.

“No.”

His face froze.

“Emma.”

“You still don’t understand.”

I closed the ring box myself.

“I didn’t leave because you wouldn’t marry me.”

“I left because you enjoyed making me feel foolish for wanting a future with you.”

He stood.

“You’re choosing Lucas?”

“No.”

I smiled sadly.

“I’m choosing not to choose you.”

That hurt him more.

Sofia came two weeks later.

She cried before I even opened the door completely.

“I should have told you.”

“Yes.”

“I was afraid Ethan and the others would hate me.”

“And you decided it was easier if I was humiliated instead.”

She lowered her head.

“I didn’t think it would go that far.”

“You watched me prepare for a month.”

She had no answer.

I didn’t slam the door.

I didn’t insult her.

I simply said:

“I hope someday you become the kind of friend you wanted me to believe you were.”

Then I closed it.

Lucas returned abroad a month later.

Before leaving, he asked me to have coffee.

Not dinner.

Not a date.

Coffee.

At the airport, he placed the ring box on the table between us.

“I don’t want this.”

I stared at it.

He smiled.

“Not like this.”

He took it back.

“If you ever choose me, I want it to happen on an ordinary day when nobody has humiliated you and you’re not trying to prove anything.”

“Lucas…”

“No promises.”

He stood.

“Just live your life.”

So I did.

For eight months.

I traveled.

I worked.

I learned how much of my personality had become organized around Ethan’s moods.

Then one evening, Lucas came back.

I knew because he sent one message.

“I’m down.”

The same two words.

I laughed when I saw them.

I went downstairs.

He was leaning against his car.

No suit.

No ring.

“Why are you here?”

“Dinner.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

I studied him.

Then I asked:

“Are you still interested in marrying me?”

Lucas sighed.

“Emma, most people begin with dinner.”

I laughed.

He opened the passenger door.

This time, I got in.

A year later, Lucas proposed.

No hotel.

No thousand boxes.

No audience.

We were in my kitchen.

I was wearing pajamas.

He was burning dinner.

He turned around, took a ring from his pocket and said:

“I’ve loved you for a long time. But that isn’t why you should marry me.”

I stared at him.

“Then why should I?”

“Because you love me too.”

And this time, I did.

I said yes.

Not because there were guests waiting.

Not because I’d spent years dreaming of becoming someone’s wife.

Not because another man had rejected me.

I said yes because nobody had turned my happiness into a bet.

Nobody was laughing behind a door.

Nobody needed to teach me how lucky I was to be chosen.

Years earlier, Ethan told me that being Mrs. Miller wasn’t a seat I could occupy simply because I wanted it.

He was right about one thing.

I had wanted that seat far too much.

So much that I had forgotten to ask whether the man beside it deserved me.

The day Ethan turned our engagement into a joke, he thought he was teaching me not to cling to him.

He succeeded.

I let go.

And by the time he finally came back with the real ring I’d once wanted more than anything—

I had already learned that the most important choice wasn’t who would marry me.

It was who I would never again allow to make me feel small for wanting to be loved.