Epilogue
NATE
A month and a half later
“I can’t believeI let you talk me into this,” I grumbled miserably. This was my personal hell. Everything from the strobe lights to the god-awful music to the sound of shrieking teenage girls was a nightmare. I’d gotten a headache the moment I walked into the high school gym, and it was getting worse with each passing minute.
True to her word, Luna had jumped at the opportunity to help Evan with the school dance. However, she’d also taken her complaints on the outdated tradition to the school board. After an impassioned speech that rallied several of the parents to her side, the tradition had officially been changed to include any guardian of a high school freshman who wanted to be involved.
There had been so many volunteers this year that the dance was being touted as the most successful in the school’s history. I didn’t care one way or the other about that. I just loved that my two girls found yet another common interest to bond over.
To say things had been great the past month and a half would have been an understatement. Under Luna’s love and praise, my baby girl blossomed. Evan was the happiest I’d ever seen her. She had a whole crew of friends now, was making straight A’s in school, and even though she’d finished paying off the damage she’d done to Luna’s car all those months ago, she stayed on at Warren’s General Store for no reason other than she loved the quality time she got to spend with her grandparents.
Just as Luna had suspected, Sunday dinners at the Warren house now included an inquisition on when I planned to propose to Luna and make an honest woman out of her, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. And Luna didn’t seem to mind either, which was good, considering the ring I’d bought for her had been burning a hole in my pocket for a while now. Evan already knew, having gone with me to pick it out, and was so excited she could barely see straight. I was just waiting for the right moment. I didn’t have a clue when that would be, but I trusted I’d know when it presented itself.
“Oh, stop complaining. This is great!” Luna smacked me in the arm as she bounced beside me, swaying her hips to the terrible beat of whatever the hell was blaring from the speakers. “I mean, come on. You can’t be grumpy when you see that. She looks so happy.”
Luna clasped her hands to her chest, hearts in her eyes as she looked across the dance floor to Evan, who was currently slow dancing with some punk-ass fourteen-year-old kid with too much gel in his hair.
“I absolutely can when I’m watching my baby girl get felt up by a walking hormone.”
“She’s not being felt up! They’re just dancing,” she said dreamily. She was so over-the-moon that Evan had been asked out by the boy she’d apparently been crushing on for some time now, that she couldn’t see what was happening right in front of our faces.
“His hand is far too close to her ass. I’m going to break that shit up now.”
Luna latched onto my wrist when I started in their direction, using my own momentum to spin me around. She latched on like a spider monkey, lifting up on the toes of her sexy heels and wrapping her arms around my neck.
“You are not going to ruin this night for her, Nathanial Desmond Warren,” she scolded, pulling a Georgia Warren and middle-naming me. “Evan has a good head on her shoulders and knows how to make smart decisions. And besides that, Kenneth knows good and well we’re both here to chaperone, and after you put the fear of God into him back at the house, I don’t think he’s brave enough to make a move like that.”
I smiled unrepentantly as I wrapped my arms around Luna’s waist and pulled her to me. “All right, I’ll loosen up. A little,” I stressed when she smiled brightly. “But I’m not changing my mind on the other thing. She’s not allowed to go on actual dates, unchaperoned, until she’s sixteen.”
Luna nodded solemnly. “Agreed. Now dance with me already before I have to resort to finding a walking hormone of my own to take me for a spin on the dance floor.”
We started swaying as the music changed to something slower. “Do you have any clue how much I love you?”
She twisted her lips to the side in mock contemplation. “I might have an idea.”
I shook my head. “You couldn’t possibly. Because every day I wake up even more in love with you than the day before.”
Those tawny eyes twinkled beneath the tacky glow coming from the disco ball over the dance floor. “Well that’s really good. Because I accidentally found the engagement ring you’ve been keeping in your sock drawer, and my answer is yes.”
The End.