“Oh my goodness, what a precious wittle princie!”

I touch Prince Ollie’s tiny forehead and then beam at Lucy, my best friend and his beautiful mother.

“Maybe I’m biased, but I have never seen a cuter baby ever. Look at all this hair.” I run my fingertips lightly over baby Ollie’s wavy, dark brown hair, and he rewards me with a quick show of his dimple.

“Was that gas? It wasn’t, right? He was totally smiling at me.”

“I’m afraid it might have been gas.” Lucy laughs. “He’s still too young to really smile. Just five and a half weeks.”

“Tell her, Ollie. Mama’s wrong,” I coo.

“What is she wrong about?” Lucy’s fiancé steps out of my dorm room’s en suite bathroom, and I rush to hide my minor double-take. It’s possible I used to stalk him on Instagram—way before I had my own honey.

“That Oliver was smiling at me.”

“Oh, he most definitely was.” Liam winks. “He likes a woman in a cap and gown.”

I straighten my graduation cap and smile back down at Ollie. “I’m so glad you guys are here. Happy to meet you, baby Ollie. Even happier to be finished with school,” I tell Lucy.

I got a job offer from Imagine shortly after I returned to school last August. The film Dash and I worked on, now called Dove’s Journey, was the one chosen for expansion into a full-length feature film.

The studio started working on it in January, with Dash in the lead animator spot for the first time in his career. We weren’t seeing much of each other, but in early February, Sara Blaise—whose husband is indeed a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Frasier—decided I deserved to work on the film, too, so Imagine worked out a deal with UGA for me to be in Nashville Thursday through Sunday every week. The studio sends a private plane for me, and sometimes Dash is in it waiting for me. It’s the craziest.

He’s still got his house in Burbank, but for now, he’s working solely out of Nashville.

The past few months have been good to us both. Getting the lead animator job was what Dash needed to get back in sync. I think it helped him feel less sad when I came back to school. The whole fall, we saw each other weekends only; Dash would sometimes have to fly from Burbank on a Friday and fly home late Sunday night. Sometimes we’d rent a hotel for the weekend. Other times, he’d stay here in my room at the sorority house. It’s not really in line with the rules, but since I’m an officer, we bent them.

During breaks, I’d go to him. We spent Christmas with his family in Grenoble, in the French Alps. While we were there, his mom told me over a bottle of wine that she and his dad were separated when Lex died—but now they’re back together. They seem peaceful, if still not quite what you’d call “happy.”

Dash does, too. He told me recently when we were snuggling in my dorm room bed that he’d decided finally to amor fati it. Let it go. I know he’s still sad sometimes, but he doesn’t dwell on it the way he did sometimes the first six months.

I walk over to the window and look down, through two huge trees, at the house parking lot. Dash has been gone on a mysterious errand for more than an hour now. If he’s not back soon, he might be late for graduation. As it is, I have to report to my station near the football stadium in fifteen minutes.

“Is your dad still sitting with us?” Lucy asks.

“Hmm?” I turn to face her.

“Oh, nothing. I had heard your dad might sit with us.”

I shrug. “If he told Dash that.”

Dad’s relationship with Dash is…strange. The best kind of strange, but strange for sure. Shortly after we wrapped our little movie reel this summer, I was doing rush week when Dash called and asked me out to dinner—here in Athens. Come to find out, he’d been at Dad’s house. What they talked about, I’ll never know, but since then, we’ve had dinner with Dad and Harlow several times, and it’s never seemed awkward in the slightest.

I peer back out the window in time to see a long, dark SUV pull up. Something about the way it parks catches my eye, and sure enough, a second later, the doors open and I see… “Mags?” I whirl toward Lucy. “Mags is here? I didn’t know she was coming.” I look back out the window, and I notice my other friend Charley. She’s putting a bag in Dash’s arms.

“Hey now…” I laugh.

“Surprise, surprise!” With Liam on her shoulder, Lucy bounces over and hugs me. “I guess you kinda spoiled the big ‘boo’ moment, but that’s okay.”

“So Dash went to the airport?”

She shrugs, looking mysterious.

A minute later, Liam walks back into my room hauling a suitcase. Right there on his heels is Charley. She skips over to me in her short, red dress and flings her arms around my neck. “My chickadee! Congratulations!”

“I thought you were graduating today.”

She beams. “I am, but I’m not walking.”

“Oh my God, you rebel. Can’t believe you’re here!”

Mags is next, snapping my picture and tucking a stray hair into my cap. “You look great, Amelia. Did you have your eyebrows done?”

“Just yesterday.”

“Are we ready?” Charley asks.

“Where’s Dash?”

She wiggles her eyebrows in answer, and I smile—even as I feel a pang of disappointment. Then my door opens and Dash is there: my favorite sight. He looks so tall and broad in khaki shorts and a white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His beard is just the way I like it: kind of short and just a little darker than a five o’clock shadow. And of course, he’s wearing glasses. I just love my sexy artist man in glasses.

I don’t even realize that I’ve started walking toward him until I reach him. Then I throw my arms around his neck.

“You’re back.” I press a kiss on his jaw.

“That I am.”

“Thanks for bringing my buds.”

He smiles. “Of course.” He runs his hand over my collar. “You look hot. Like a sexy scholar.”

“That’s the look I’m going for with this. The sexy scholar.” I wink.

“Is it time for you to go line up?” He looks down at his phone.

“I think it is.”

“C’mon.” He grabs my hand. “I’ll walk ya there.”

For a few minutes, as we walk the cobblestone path toward the stadium, there’s no one on this crowded campus but the two of us. We’re not a sorority girl and her three-years-older, super hot, animator boyfriend, or a couple with a big boat-load of baggage. I’m not a little girl with glasses, and he’s not the boy next door. We’re just a couple on a summer afternoon. A couple with an open road ahead, and no more secrets.

* * *

I have one more secret. I’ve been working on it in my every waking moment for a month now. Something special, just for Am. Well—for Ammy and a couple thousand others.

I got the idea last summer, but I wanted to be sure before I did it. I didn’t want to do this thing too soon. So I talked to Lucy. And Maggie. And Charley. And even Am’s new stepmom, Harlow.

It’s a film short: just a hundred and seventy seconds. It doesn’t start until the graduation ceremony is almost over, and I’ve had time to slip into a fold-out chair a few spots down from Ammy, who’s sitting amongst the rows and rows of graduating students on the football field.

I watch her eyes follow the agenda on the giant screen in the end zone as it plays the words to the school song. Then that’s over, and the screen turns sky blue.

My heart trips over itself.

The film first shows a dove, sitting pretty in her nest in a big oak tree in a park. I catch Ammy’s face here, and I’m pretty sure I see the first “o” of her mouth. A bit of Vivaldi’s Summer plays in the background, light and airy, then a little slower as the viewer travels down the tree trunk, where we see another bird: this time a big, black raven in an old bird house that’s tacked onto the tree’s lowest branch. The raven tilts his head up, watching the bright, beautiful dove from down below her. Then he flies away and comes back with a worm.

Amelia’s eyes are huge. She looks around. She looks almost afraid. My heart pounds.

After that, the dove and raven fly together in the clouds. But then the tree loses its leaves and my pretty dove is left alone. A tear rolls down Amelia’s cheek. The little dove bows her head; the angle changes, and flowers start to burst forth from the ground. The raven comes back. The dove ignores him for a moment.

Shit, Ammy is crying.

My eyes fly between Ammy and the screen as the two birds huddle under a branch while rain falls all around them. Then they lean against each other. After that, they settle in the dove’s nest together. The shot pans, and in the sky above their tree, the clouds form the words I’ve seen so many times before, so I don’t look this time: Will You Marry Me, Amelia?

I can only watch her sob for just a second. Then I’m on my feet, moving past the three people between us, getting on my knee in front of her as everyone around us gasps and whispers…and the stadium begins to roar, because now it’s us onscreen.

I watch the footage that night from our bed in Lucy’s family’s private jet. Am is sleeping on my arm, and I’m drinking orange soda. We’re on our way to Cozumel for a quick weekend away. Some time to celebrate. On the flatscreen mounted on the jet’s small bedroom wall, I watch her face light up as I open the little black box. Then she clings to me and sobs, so much it takes a while for me to get the diamond on her finger.

Then she’s looking at it, laughing and hugging me and crying on camera. I see her mouth: “You had this planned!”

I see myself grinning like a fucking fool. A fucking happy fool. A fool who just got lucky like that ragged ass raven.

In the last few seconds, we’re both on our feet. I’m twirling her around. When I close my eyes, I am still twirling her around.

It’s like a dream, this life. It’s like a Disney movie. And it’s ours.

* * *

Next up is Covet, the third Sinful Secrets Romance. Add it to your Goodreads:

Did you know Crown Jewels, book one in this series of stand-alones, is free for a few days? Keep reading for an exclusive excerpt!