Which is exactly why I’m standing on the edge of a thousand-foot drop in the Swiss Alps, watching Alyssa adjust her paragliding harness. Three months have passed since we dismantled Troy’s trafficking network, and she’s spent every one of them throwing herself into new adventures like she’s making up for lost time.
“You’re sure about this?” I ask for the third time as I test the straps that connect us together. “Because if we die, I’m going to be very annoyed with you.”
“We’re not going to die,” she assures me as she checks our equipment one final time. “I’ve done this dozens of times.”
“That’s what every overconfident woman says right before she plummets to her death.”
The instructor gives us final directions in heavily accented English while I mentally rehearse the speech I’ve been practicing for weeks. The ring box is in a secured pocket of my harness, and every time I move, I can feel it pressing against my ribs like a reminder of everything I’m about to risk.
“Ready?” the instructor calls out.
Alyssa grins at me with the same fearless smile she wore when she climbed that shipping container months ago. “Let’s fly.”
We run toward the edge together with our feet hitting the ground in synchronized steps until suddenly there’s no ground left. The sensation of falling lasts maybe three seconds beforethe parachute catches the mountain winds and lifts us into the sky like we weigh nothing at all.
“Holy shit,” I breathe as the Alps spread out beneath us in panoramic glory. “This is incredible.”
She’s pressed against my chest thanks to the tandem harness, and I can feel her heart racing. Below us, the valley floor looks like a child’s toy set, complete with miniature villages and thread-thin rivers that snake through forests of impossible green.
“I told you you’d love it,” she screams, though her voice gets carried away by the wind.
We soar through thermals that lift us higher, then glide over meadows dotted with wildflowers that look like scattered confetti from this altitude. The silence up here feels different from any quiet I’ve ever experienced—not empty, but full of possibility.
“Alyssa,” I say after we’ve been floating for maybe ten minutes, “thank you for this. For everything. These past few months have been…”
“Have been what?”
“Perfect. Terrifying and perfect and everything I never knew I wanted.”
Now. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for.
“Speaking of things you never knew you wanted,” I begin as I maneuver us into a slow spiral that gives me time to reach the ring box without destabilizing our flight, “there’s something I need to ask you.”
“What kind of something?”
I pull the small velvet box from my pocket and hold it where she can see it. The diamond catches the mountain sunlight and throws rainbows across the silk of our parachute, creating the kind of moment that romance novels are written about.
“Maksim, are you—”
“Proposing to you while we’re suspended a thousand feet above the Swiss Alps? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing.” I open the box to reveal the three-carat emerald-cut diamond I spent weeks selecting. “Alyssa, you jumped into my life like you jumped off that shipping container—fearlessly, completely, without looking back. You made me believe in things I thought were impossible.”
She twists in the harness to look at me with tears streaming down her face as we continue our lazy descent toward the landing field.
“You taught me the difference between protecting someone and controlling them,” I continue. “You showed me what it means to trust someone enough to let them make their own choices, even when those choices scare the hell out of me. You’re the strongest, bravest, most stubborn woman I’ve ever met, and I want to spend the rest of my life keeping up with you.”
“Maksim…”
“Marry me, Alyssa. Be my wife, my partner, my everything. Let me love you for the next fifty years the way I’ve loved you for the past few months—completely, desperately, with everything I have.”
We’re maybe two hundred feet from the ground now, close enough that I can see the landing zone approaching fast. She needs to answer soon, or this proposal is going to end withus tumbling across a Swiss meadow in a tangle of strings and romance.
“Yes,” she replies, laughing and crying at the same time. “Yes, you crazy, wonderful, impossible man. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
I slide the ring onto her finger just as our feet touch the ground, and then we’re running together to slow our momentum before we collapse in a heap of parachute and laughter, and pure joy.
“That was the most ridiculous proposal in history,” she declares as she examines the ring on her hand. “I can’t believe you made me say yes while we were falling out of the sky.”
“You love ridiculous.”
