I lift my head. She’s crouched on the ground beside the dog. And in her hand is the ring box, coated in mud.
“Well,” I laugh, because I have no idea what else to do, “it was.”
We sit on the bench, the dog gnawing a toggle on my coat between us. I sigh. “You can open it, if you want. Plan’s out the window.” I look at the dog. “Thanks, dude. I kept trying to make it, like, this big, amazing moment.”
He wags his tail and licks me in the eye.
Camille is quiet a moment, then passes the box to me. “It still can be.”
“Yeah? You don’t mind that it’s covered in mud?”
“So are you,” she laughs, and motions to my clothes, now streaked and stained. “It’s kind of perfect.”
“Kind of perfect,” I repeat, nodding. In my chest, I feel my heart start thrumming again, the excitement returning. “I’ll take it.”
I kneel in front of her, knee sinking in the ice and mud.
“Camille,” I start, both of us laughing when the dog wiggles forward to lick my eye again. We scratch his ears until he gets distracted by the handful of chips Camille takes from a bag and piles on the bench.
I take a breath and start again. “Growing up, I thought I was so unlucky because of all this stuff I missed out on. I didn’t get to have a dad, and I didn’t get to know where I came from. I didn’t get to ‘be a real Fairfield.’ That’s what I spent a lot of time thinking about, when I was younger: all the stuff I didn’t have.
“But then I went looking for it,” I go on, swallowing the sting in my throat, “and I found you. So if missing out on all that stuff, and being unlucky now and then...if that’s what I had to do to find you?” I open the box, laughing when she instantly tears up and covers her mouth. “Then it was worth it. Where I come from suddenly doesn’t seem half as important as where I’m going.
“And, as amazing as it feels to know I was your first…” I pause; she rolls her eyes and laughs, sniffing. “…all I really care about is that you let me be your last.”
Carefully, I take the ring from the box. She wipes her face with both hands, fanning her eyes. It doesn’t stop the crying one bit.
“Camille...will you marry me?”
The tears double when she laughs, nodding and giving me her left hand. I slide the ring onto her finger.
Before I can rise to kiss her, though, the dog lunges into my lap—and knocks me back down into the mud.
Camille bursts out laughing while the dog licks every bit of my face. She manages to pull him back by the makeshift harness, feeding him more chips until I can get up.
“I think,” she says, “you just got a fiancée and a new dog, all in the same day.”
“Lucky me.” I scratch his chin and help her turn the scarf into a sort of leash. As we start back the way we came, I notice her alternating between grinning at her ring in the light, and giving a smaller, more subdued smile when she looks at the dog, eagerly leading us along. He’s rail-thin; I mention picking up some dog food on the way home.
“Do you think we should keep him?” she asks, biting her lip. “What if someone lost him?”
“He’s been out here a long time. If he belongs to anyone, they’ve either stopped looking, or didn’t take care of him. But we can call some shelters, give them a description, just in case.” I study her. “You sure you’re ready for a new dog?”
“I think so. It’s been...wow. Two years.” She swallows, looking like she might tear up again. But one glance at the dog stops it. “I still miss Arrow, but I miss having a dog around in general, too. Maybe I’d miss him less, if we got another.”
We pause at the start of the path and look back over the water, one last time.
“River,” Camille says, suddenly.
“What?”
“River—I think that’s what his name should be.” When she rubs the dog’s ears, her ring flashing in the fading light, I find myself feeling grateful my real plan, perfect as it might have seemed, didn’t pan out.
“River,” I repeat, nodding. “I like it. We definitely have some good memories of this place.”
In the car, River circles twice on his seat before flopping down onto his side, paws outstretched in front of him. Camille smiles; that’s how Arrow used to lie down in the car, too.
While I drive, she calls Brynn, whose joyful squeals manage to fill the entire car through the phone. We tell her to keep it a secret, for now. Telling our parents in-person seems best.
“I can’t believe,” Camille says, when we hang up, “I’m going to be a Fairfield.”
“You don’t have to take my name,” I tell her, then joke, “Especially since you used to hate the Fairfields.”
“I didn’t know any Fairfields, yet. Guess I’ve come around on them.” She pauses, turning my hand in hers on the console. “Did you mean what you said? About all that stuff being worth it, because of me?”
I glance at her, then back at the stoplight in front of us, slowing the car and stopping when it’s still yellow, with plenty of time to get through. Then I kiss her, so deep it’s enough to steal the air from her lungs.
“Absolutely,” I tell her. “Every word of it.”
Also by Piper Lennox
The Fairfields
Darling, All at Once
Honey, When It Ends
Baby, Be My Last
* * *
Love in Kona
Pull Me Under | Crash Around Me | When We Break
* * *
Standalones
All Mine | Teach Me | The Road to You
It’s Complicated: A Novella (Subscriber Exclusive)
About the Author
Piper Lennox is the author of the Love in Kona series, All Mine, and more. Her favorite heroes are broken; her favorite heroines are feisty (and, usually, also broken). Nothing fascinates her more than all the incredible ways two people can learn to save themselves...and each other.
Piper lives in Virginia with her husband, their three children, and a Siberian Husky too smart for his own good. Before she spent her days writing about life and love, she wrote copy for insurance companies. She will never, ever go back.
www.piperlennox.com
Baby, Be My Last: The Fairfields | Book Three Page 26