“That’s perfect. I’ll go get—”
“You sit down. I’ll go get everything we need.”
He came back with two glasses of sparkling cider, “A toast to my bride,” he said. “You accepted help from me and gave me a purpose and a life and family I always dreamed of. I can never thank you enough. All I can do is love you forever.”
He kissed me softly and clinked our glasses together. His arm slid around my shoulders and I leaned into him, just soaking in this perfect feeling of belonging and the promise of the future with him; the future I’d always wanted.
Epilogue
One Year Later
Sometimes things turn out even better than you could have imagined. When the plumbing busted in my shop a little over a year ago, all I hoped for was a set of pipes that didn’t leak. Now I had everything and then some. My shop was doing great, turning a tidy profit, and I had two full-time workers plus a part-timer and a delivery driver.
I had Damon, our home and our son. They meant everything to me.
There was a pack and play in my office so Ashton could nap when we’re not spoiling him while I’m at work. Our perfect baby boy with his daddy’s aquamarine eyes and a little fluff of downy curls coming in, with just a hint of ginger to them.
He was the most adorable baby I’ve ever seen, all plump cheeks and dimpled hands and cute ticklish belly. He wasn’t sitting up yet, and we joked that he’d never learn to walk because we didn’t want to put him down long enough for him to learn. It’s not just me. He had Damon wrapped around his little finger. My mom came into the shop most days and played with Ashton, begging to take him to grandma’s house. But I just can’t let my baby out of my sight yet. I’d miss him too much. If I couldn’t stop and snuggle him, tickle him in the spot that makes him chuckle and be the one to feed him that baby cereal with the apples that he loves, I don’t think I’d know what to do with myself. He filled up a part of my heart I hadn’t even known was there before he was born.
The barbecue at the Vance’s was really just an excuse to get both grandbabies together so all the grandparents could spoil and snuggle them. My mom took off with Ashton, bouncing him on her hip, to go see Brenna, Brody and Laura’s little girl. She’s a spitfire like her mother, tall and noisy already. My in-laws came out in the backyard with a big blowup ball pit for the kids to play in. Before I could protest that Ashton was too little to even sit up, my mom climbed in the ball pit and held him in her lap while he chewed on a red plastic ball and Brenna squealed at him and threw balls in the air. I laughed and turned to Damon.
“How is any of this possible?”
“I was in the right place at the right time that night in the bar when you were upset about the shop. I had a way to fix your problem, and a hunch that maybe you’d fix my whole life. That I could get the girl in the craziest way possible. And like most of my off-the-wall plans, it worked out.”
“I’m glad it did,” I said. “It’s a beautiful day out, and everything is so perfect it almost hurts.”
“Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and just go check on him and watch him sleep because I can’t believe it. Or I lay there and look at you in the moonlight and think there must’ve been something good I did to earn this, and I just can’t remember what it was.”
“Maybe when you saved my business?”
“No, I would’ve had to save an entire village of orphans or something to get a life this good. There’s just no way to explain it. How we got this damn lucky. But I won’t take it for granted, I can tell you that. I remember coming home to an empty house and reading my library books for company. I remember looking at you on the Fourth of July and thinking that I didn’t like your boyfriend.”
“I didn’t have one.”
“I thought you did, and I didn’t like him,” he said, and I laughed. “Cause he wasn’t me. So I found an excuse to talk to you, to get flowers for Laura. Just to see you, get you to talk to me.”
“I bet you were sorry. I was such a mess that day!” I laughed. “I can’t believe you didn’t just run screaming out of the shop.”
“I’m tougher than that. Any guy who can’t take a little awkwardness doesn’t deserve a woman like you anyway. Don’t forget, it seemed like everybody in town was mad at me for acting like an ass to Brody and my sister right around that time. I was just glad anybody was talking to me,” he said.