“You’re a hard one to corral, Chase Kincade. From the moment I met you, you told me that love wasn’t your thing. That kisses are overrated. That being with someone wasn’t on your oh-so-busy agenda.” He chuckles with the slightest shake of his head. “But somehow I proved you otherwise. Somehow, I was able to break through that very motivated brain of yours and show you that you can still be you with your aspirations and ambition while loving me.”

“Gunner,” I whisper through tears I’m not remotely trying to fight.

“So when I asked your dad and your sisters for your hand in marriage, I told them this might be a hard one for you to accept. Tying you to me for life is a big step for a woman who didn’t have time for love to begin with. But they agreed with me. They told me that somehow, we—you and I—were better together. That somehow, our two broken and jagged halves made one incredible whole.”

I glance up to the body of Kincades behind him. My dad. Dekker. Brexton. Lennox. And the honorary Kincades, the men in their lives, who have completed my sisters and our family in ways we all never expected. All of them have smiles on their faces and hope in their eyes.

I’ve never felt more loved.

I’ve never felt less alone.

“And I tend to agree with them. There’s no one else I’d rather go through life with, Chase. There’s no one I want to fight and make up with, to love and laugh with, to sit and hold their hand in silence with. It’s always been you. Maybe that’s why that letter found its way to you all those years later. Maybe not. But something greater than us has worked in our favor since the get-go, so who am I to question it?”

“I love you,” I whisper.

“When it was suggested I ask you here, at their wedding, I told Brexton and Drew that I didn’t want to upstage their day in any way. They told me I was being ridiculous. That it wasn’t a true Kincade family function without their littlest sister getting special treatment.” A chuckle ripples through the crowd of friends and family, because that might be true. “So here we are, Chase. One orange envelope, one mistaken identity, and one dance in the rain later, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be or person I’d rather be with. Will you marry me, Chase Kincade?”

I don’t wait for him to stand as he lifts the ring up to me. The ring is just a symbol, but it’s the man that I love. So instead, I drop to my knees and take his face in my hands so he can see my eyes when I tell him the truth.

When I tell him he’s my forever.