Page 187 of Mending Hearts
“And?”
He looks at me. “I’m not losing it,” he says quietly. “I’m just… changing the shape of it.”
That’s exactly it.
He pushes off the door and walks toward the kitchen, grabbing two sodas from the fridge without asking if I want one. He hands it to me, then pauses.
“Actually,” he says, setting both down. “Wait.”
He disappears down the hallway without explanation, and for a second, I assume he’s grabbing ice or water or one of the thousand small rituals that follow a game. When he comes back, though, he’s holding something I haven’t seen before.
A small velvet box.
My pulse stutters before I can stop it. “You’re not serious,” I say, because there’s only one thing that fits in a box like that.
“I am,” he replies, and there’s no teasing in it.
He crosses the room slowly and stops in front of me. Up close, I can see the exhaustion in his eyes, the ache in the set of his shoulder, and something steadier underneath it all.
“We never really did this properly,” he says. “Not in front of our family. Not in daylight. Not without fear chewing at the edges.”
I swallow. “Vegas was perfect,” I manage. It was chaotic and impulsive and exactly us.
“It was,” he agrees. “But it was also… survival.”
That lands.
He flips the box open.
Inside aren’t new rings in the traditional sense. Not gold bands. Not diamonds. Not anything that looks like it came from a jeweler’s display case.
They’re ours.
But changed.
For twelve years, we’ve worn twisted black guitar strings as rings. Miles looped and knotted them for us in that Vegas chapel. They were uneven and slightly ridiculous and absolutely perfect.
We never stopped wearing them. Not really. When everything broke eight years ago, Ollie slipped his back onto his worn leather necklace and wore it around his neck, tucked beneath his jersey like something sacred and hidden. I kept mine on my right hand, stubborn and quiet about it. Only recently—when we chose each other out loud—did we move them where they were always meant to sit, on our left hands. No more hiding. No more technicalities.
Mine started fraying a couple of weeks ago. A tiny sharp edge catching on fabric, snagging against guitar strings when I played. He noticed it before I did.
“You’re going to cut yourself,” he’d said, frowning at my hand while we were lying in bed.
“I’ll survive.”
“I’m getting it sorted.”
I forgot about it.
Of course I did.
Now I understand.
The rings in the box are still guitar strings—but they’ve been sealed in a thin band of brushed platinum, the metal hugging the twists without hiding them. The texture is preserved beneath a clear protective layer, every ridge and curve visible. The original strings encased, strengthened, made permanent without erasing what they were.
He lifts one carefully.
“I took them to a jeweler,” he says. “Had them reinforce both. They’re the same strings, just… protected.”
