“Hey, man. It’s me. I brought my girl with me. Her name is Faith, and you would’ve loved her. Probably a little too much for my liking. But she’s amazing, so it’s not like I would’ve been able to blame you.” She smiled up at me and nodded with encouragement. “I was just telling her how I wished you could’ve met her, but if you were here then she wouldn’t be alive. I owe you for that, bro. So fucking much.”

My chest heaved and my eyes clouded over with tears. Faith wrapped her arm around me, and I knew she was crying too because I felt her body shaking with her quiet sobs. We stood like that for a while, until we managed to pull ourselves together.

“Thank you,” Faith whispered before she moved forward to press a light kiss over his name on the headstone. I lost it again, crying harder than before.

“Sorry, honey,” she murmured against my chest as I held on to her through the worst of it.

“It’s okay, baby. It was just such a beautiful gesture.” I swept the tears off her cheeks with my thumbs. “And I needed this since I never really let myself cry back then. Declan deserves to be mourned.”

“He does.” She nodded her head after searching my face with worried eyes. “Go ahead and do that however you want. I’ll be waiting for you in the car. Take all the time you need.”

She kissed my cheek and squeezed my hand before she walked away. I watched her progress, all the way to the SUV, to make sure she got inside okay. Then I turned back to Declan’s grave. “I told you she was amazing, and I wasn’t exaggerating. Not even a little bit.”

I stared at his headstone for a couple of minutes, trying to figure out the best way to start all of this. Now that I was alone, it didn’t feel as natural as it had with Faith at my side. But then I had an idea.

“I’m going to leave this with you because I don’t need it anymore.” I pulled the coin that gained me entry to Grant’s underground gambling rooms out of my pocket and set it on the bottom ledge of the headstone, tucking it behind the flowers my mom had placed there. “When Mom comes back next time, be ready for her to either smile huge or bawl her eyes out when she sees it. I’m sure they still worry about the gambling, especially since we haven’t been as close as usual. Not since I found out the truth. It was hard for me to learn how to forgive myself. I had to focus on that for a little while, before I could come to terms with the decisions they made. But I think I’ve managed to do that now. It took a lot of therapy.”

I chuckled softly, picturing how Declan would’ve reacted to the suggestion of seeing a shrink. It almost definitely would have involved lots of eye rolling and swear words. “Yeah, you heard that right. Things were bad enough that I agreed to talk to a therapist. But you would’ve liked Mrs. Crabtree. She’s damn good at her job. Easier to talk to than I expected. And she’s the one you have to thank for this visit because she suggested it. She convinced me that there were things left unsaid between us that I needed to get off my chest or else I’d never truly come to terms with your loss.”

My head dropped low, and I set my hand on top of the gravestone. “I feel like I need to start with an apology. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left it to you to be the responsible one all the time, even if you acted like it was fine. I know I’m not responsible for the accident, and that the outcome might’ve been the same if I’d been sober that night. Or it could’ve been me in the grave and you standing here talking to me. I’ll never know for sure, and I’ve learned to accept that. In part because I know it’s what you’d want me to do. Just like I know you’d want me to come to terms with all the decisions Mom and Dad made back then.”

I heaved a deep sigh and titled my head back, staring up at the sky. “I think I’ve done that too. I can’t even imagine how hard it was for them to pick between two impossible choices—do nothing and almost definitely lose us both or pull the plug on you to try to save me. They had to have been out of their minds with grief, but they still thought about how they could help strangers and donated all of your organs. It wasn’t just my life you saved that day. And in a strange twist of fate, one of those strangers was Faith. Your kidney saved her life, and your heart saved mine. So you’ve gotta know a part of you will live on with us. Always.”

The wind swirled around me, and one of the light green petals from an orchid in the bouquet of flowers broke free. They were my mom’s favorite flower, something Declan and I had learned at a young age when we’d asked our dad why he brought them home so often. The petal drifted upwards in an odd pattern, until it came to rest on my hand. I’d never been one to believe in the paranormal, but I got goosebumps the moment it touched my skin.

“So many strange twists of fate brought Faith to me.” I dropped the petal into the palm of my other hand to cup it there. “I guess it isn’t too much of a stretch to think this is your way of telling me you got the message. I shouldn’t be surprised since you were always the resourceful twin. You wouldn’t let a little thing like death stop you from helping me if you thought I needed it.”

I chuckled softly and shook my head as I tucked the petal into my pocket. “Thanks, bro. I love you, too.”

I was still smiling when I climbed into the driver’s seat of my SUV.

“You good?” Faith asked.

“Yeah.” In fact, I was better than good. I felt like a weight I’d been carrying for more than five years—one that’d gotten heavier when I’d learned the truth about Declan’s death and my heart transplant—had finally lifted. My twin was gone, and I missed him terribly. But I was still here, and I needed to live my life to the fullest. Which made me think about Faith’s conversation with Christine.

I was pretty sure she didn’t know I’d listened to the tail end of it, shamelessly eavesdropping like Mrs. Crabtree always did. Hearing her say that she’d thought about marrying me, having my kids, almost knocked me over. But it’d felt like the wrong time to talk about it, considering we were in our therapist’s office and our next stop was a cemetery. It was probably still wrong since we hadn’t left the cemetery. But now that the idea was in my head, I couldn’t get it out.

I wasn’t in the least bit prepared. We were in the least romantic spot possible. And it’d been an incredibly emotional day. But that didn’t stop me from asking, “Will you marry me?”

“Will I—what?” she sputtered.

I gathered her hands in mine and pressed a gentle kiss against her lips. “I know to anyone else this proposal would be all wrong because to them it would be horribly unromantic. But they’re not us.”

“I—I—” she stammered, and I kissed her again to stop the flow of words, assuming she would’ve regained the ability to speak.

When her lips stopped moving, I pulled away and whispered, “I’ll give you the big romantic proposal later, with me down on one knee with a ring if that’s what you want. But I needed to do this here and now. While I feel closer to Declan than I have in five years. Where maybe he could witness me asking the tough girl who stole my heart if she’d do me the honor of being my wife. If she’d spend the rest of her life with me, because she makes me happier than I’ve ever been before. I already know we’ll love each other through sickness and health, in good times and bad. But I’d still like to make it official. Give you my last name. Make you a Montgomery officially, even though you’re already one in every other way that matters.”

“Yes,” she gasped, with tears streaming down her cheeks. Happy ones this time.

“Yes?”

“Yes, I’ll marry you. I don’t need the big romantic proposal later. Or you down on one knee. Or even the ring.” She cupped my cheeks with her palms and pressed her forehead against mine. “All I need is you to make me happy. Through sickness and health. Good times and bad. Just like you said.”

“So I didn’t fuck this up?”

“No, honey. Not even close. I understand why you wanted to do it this way. Weddings are supposed to be about family.”

And ours would be. The tension between my parents and me had taken its toll on Faith as well. She’d grown close to them, especially my mom, but she’d felt like she needed to take my side while we worked through everything. So she’d kept her distance because that’s what I’d been doing. But we didn’t need to do that. Not anymore.