Harper’s POV
The Phoenix interview happens three days before the draft, and I spend the entire morning convincing myself I'm going to bomb it.
I set up my laptop on the kitchen table, angle the camera to show the blazer I'm wearing over my pajama pants, and practice my professional smile in the reflection of my darkened phone screen. When the video call connects, three faces appear in separate boxes—director of operations, assistant GM, head of player relations. All of them looking at me like I'm supposed to have answers.
Forty-five minutes of questions about my experience, my approach to tournament chaos, my strategies for managing athletes with complicated histories. I tell them about the championship season, about coordinating logistics for eighteen players with eighteen different needs, about learning to read people and anticipate problems before they explode. They nod and take notes and ask follow-up questions that make me think I'm either impressing them or giving them ammunition to reject me politely.
"We'll be in touch," the director says at the end, and I spend the next three days analyzing every word I said for signs of failure.
Draft day arrives with chaos I wasn't prepared for.
The green room is a circus of cameras and families and agents pacing like caged animals, everyone's futures hanging on names being called in a specific order. I sit beside Ethan in a row of plastic chairs, my hand locked in his, watching pick after pick flash across the massive screens mounted on every wall.
First round passes without his name. I feel him tense beside me, his grip tightening on my fingers, and I squeeze back without saying anything because there's nothing to say. The analysts on screen start speculating about draft surprises and unexpected slides, and I want to throw something at their smug faces.
His mom sits on his other side, clutching a tissue she's already shredded into confetti, her eyes fixed on the screen with the kind of desperate hope that makes my chest ache. She's been dreaming of this moment since Ethan was fourteen years old, since she was working three jobs to afford basketball camps, and watching her wait is almost harder than waiting myself.
Second round begins, and Ethan's phone buzzes in his pocket.
He pulls it out with shaking hands, and I lean over to read the message on the screen. Phoenix front office, three words: "Get ready. Soon."
My heart stops, restarts, pounds against my ribs so hard I'm sure everyone can hear it.
Pick forty-four. Not him. Pick forty-five. Not him. Pick forty-six, and the room holds its breath.
Pick forty-seven. Phoenix Suns.
"With the forty-seventh pick in the NBA draft, the Phoenix Suns select... Ethan Reyes, guard, from—"
The rest is drowned out by screaming. His mom bursts into tears, throwing her arms around him. Agents appear from nowhere, slapping his back, shouting congratulations. Cameras swarm toward us, capturing the moment from every angle.
Ethan turns to me, and for one perfect second the chaos falls away. Just us, just this, just the culmination of everything we've fought for.
He pulls me into a kiss that tastes like joy and relief and the beginning of something new. Then he's being ushered toward the stage, toward the commissioner waiting with a jersey and a handshake, toward the future he's been chasing since he was a kid shooting hoops in his driveway.
I watch him hold up the Phoenix jersey, grinning for the cameras, and even from across the room I can see him searching the crowd for my face. When our eyes meet, his smile widens into something private, something just for me.
My phone buzzes in my clutch.
I pull it out expecting a congratulations text from Monica, but the notification makes my breath catch. Email from Phoenix Sports Operations, subject line: "Job Offer - Junior Coordinator Position."
I open it with shaking fingers, scanning the words—salary, start date, relocation assistance, benefits package. Real. Official. Mine.
Ethan is still on stage, still smiling for photographs, but I hold up my phone and wave it until he sees. His expression shifts from professional happiness to genuine joy, and even from this distance I can read his lips: "I told you."
The next few hours blur together in a haze of interviews and photographs and handshakes with people whose names I immediately forget. His mom cries on my shoulder, thanking me for making her son happy, and I cry right back because I've never had a mother look at me with that much warmth.
By midnight, the chaos finally dies down. We find each other in a hallway outside the green room, both exhausted, both running on adrenaline and disbelief. His tie hangs loose around his neck, jacket abandoned somewhere. My heels are in my hand, bare feet pressing against the cold floor.
"Phoenix," he says, leaning against the wall.
"Phoenix," I echo, sliding down to sit beside him.
"We're really doing this." He takes my hand, lacing our fingers together.
"We're really doing this."
Silence settles between us, comfortable and full. The hallway is quiet now, the last of the media packed up and gone, and for a moment it's just us—two people on the edge of a future neither of us expected.
"When we get to Phoenix," he says slowly, his thumb tracing patterns on my palm, "when things settle and we've found an apartment and figured out our routines... there's something I want to ask you."
My heart stutters. "Something like what?"
"The kind of something that requires a ring." He turns to look at me, and there's nothing playful in his expression—just certainty, absolute and unwavering. "A plan. Somewhere that matters."
I forget how to breathe.
"I'm going to marry you, Harper Calloway." He cups my face with his free hand, tilting my chin up. "Not today. Not tomorrow. But soon. When the time is right and we're ready."
Tears blur my vision, happy ones this time, and I pull him into a kiss that says everything words can't capture. When we break apart, both smiling like idiots, I press my forehead to his.
"Ask me properly," I whisper, "and the answer will be yes."
His grin is blinding. "I'm going to hold you to that."
Footsteps echo down the hallway—someone from Phoenix's PR team, coming to collect him for one last round of interviews. Ethan stands, pulling me up with him, and I slip my heels back on while he straightens his tie.
"Ready?" he asks, offering his hand.
I take it, feeling his fingers close around mine with familiar warmth. "Ready."
We walk toward the noise together, toward the cameras and questions and the chaos of our new life waiting on the other side. Phoenix stretches ahead of us—new city, new jobs, new challenges we can't even imagine yet.
His hand squeezes mine as we reach the door, and I squeeze back.
The future is waiting, full of unknowns and obstacles and a thousand things that could go wrong. Moving across the country, starting new careers, building a life together from scratch. A ring he's planning to buy. A question he's planning to ask. A wedding that might happen someday, if we're brave enough to keep choosing each other.
It's terrifying. It's exhilarating. It's everything I never let myself want.
The door opens, and the noise of our future crashes over us like a wave.
We step through together.