by Serena Bell
He lets me take that in—on a giant wave of relief and joy—before he says, “And not just room, but the master-bedroom kind of room, if you know what I mean.” One side of his mouth tips up, and then, like the rest can’t resist following, he grins at me.
I do. I do. I know what he means with a big bubble of hope and excitement that’s expanding in my chest as he talks.
He takes a step toward me, opens his arms, and I fly into them. He hugs me—just hugs me—and oh, my God, it feels so good. He is so big and so strong and so warm, and he just holds on and holds on, and, “Even if you never want to have any more sex with me, will you at least hug me from time to time?” I blurt.
He shakes with laughter against me. “You are shit out of luck if you think I’m going to never want to have sex with you.”
Then he kisses me, soft and sweet and brief, before coming back for seconds with gusto—and tongue.
If we weren’t in the backyard, if Jonah and Madden weren’t playing in my basement and liable to appear at any goddamn moment, I’d tackle him to the ground, but we both step back like the sensible parents we are.
“I have something I want to show you, too,” he says.
Chapter 47
Sawyer
I lead her back to my house and tell her to wait in the living room while I run upstairs and come back downstairs with my Lucy journal.
I open the journal to after we met at Maeve’s. I hold it out so she can read it for herself. There’s no entry for that night, because I got home too late and was too tired and (still) horny for her to write in the journal. Anyway, it’s not that night I’d want her to see, but all the nights following it. “Look.”
The entries after the night I met her at Maeve’s are all dated and addressed to Lucy but blank—until the very last entry.
“I couldn’t,” I explain. “I tried to write to her again after the night we met, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I’d get the date down, and my greeting to her, and then—nothing.”
Her gaze flashes to mine, confusion written there.
“Because I knew everything had changed. I knew meeting you had changed everything, and I didn’t want to tell her.”
“Oh,” she says. “Oh.”
Her eyes are huge. She bites her lip.
“And then I moved in next door and it was even more true. I mean, maybe I didn’t know consciously, but some part of me must have known, because I couldn’t write to Lucy. Until the Friday night before the wedding.” I push the journal closer. “Read it.”
She hesitates. I can’t blame her. I don’t think many women would want to read what their lover had written to his dead wife—at least not any more than she’s already had to stomach. But I don’t think I can make her believe—really believe—unless she sees it for herself.
“That’s the entry I saw,” she says.
“I know.”
She drops her chin and studies the page. I read over her shoulder.
Dear Lucy,
I love you. I will probably always love you.
I have something I have to tell you, though. I met someone, and I’m going away this weekend with her. Her name is Elle. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but I think it could be something real. Something serious. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but it felt—weird and awkward. I hope wherever you are, you don’t have weird and awkward, and you get what I’m trying to say. Thanks for listening.
Love,
Sawyer
She looks up at me. Whispers, “I thought—”
“I know. I get it.”
“I’m so sorry. I only read the first line. And then I freaked out and my brain went blank and all the words blurred together.”
“I figured.”
“I’m an idiot.”
“Nah,” I say. “You just have a little PTSD because your ex-husband is an asshole.”
That makes her smile.
I reach toward the side table and grab a pen. “Hey. Can I do something?”
Her eyes are quizzical.
“I want to write one last entry. I want to say goodbye to her.”
Her eyes open wide, and she bites her lip. “You don’t have to do that—”
“I don’t have to. But I want to.”
“Are you sure? I don’t have to watch—you could do it in private?”
“I want you to. If that’s okay with you.”
She nods, her face very serious.
I begin writing as she watches over my shoulder.
Dear Lucy,
I love you. I will probably always love you.
But it’s time for me to stop writing to you. Because of Elle. Because I’m crazy about her, Luce. Crazy. I’m head over heels in love with her. And I think there’s a chance if I run with it, we could be really, really good together. With the boys, too. A family.
So—there you have it. I hope you meant what you said about wanting me to be happy, because I don’t seem to be able to help it when I’m around her.
And I can’t write to you anymore because I need to give Elle this part of me now. All the things I’ve been telling you, I need to—I want to—tell her. So I’m saying goodbye. Again. I guess this is a bigger kind of goodbye than the one we said before. Or maybe just different? What do I know?
I love you. I’ll probably always love you. Goodbye, Luce.
Love, Sawyer
“Oh, Jesus, Elle, don’t cry,” I say, which is a ridiculous thing to say for so many reasons, not the least of which is that my own vision is blurred.
“I can’t help it,” she moans, her beautiful face streaked with tears. “I just have all these feelings. And they’re all mixed up. I mean, how can I want her to be alive and with you and Jonah and still be so glad she’s not here so you can be with me? How can I feel so bad for both of you and so happy for both of us, especially when those two overlap?”
“I don’t know,” I say, because, shit, I really don’t. “If I knew the answer to that—hell, I don’t know how I can be so sad and happy at the same time, either, but apparently it’s possible. And most of the time, to be perfectly honest, with the exception of these last few weeks, which have sucked, because I’ve missed you so fucking much, I’m just happy. Happy that you’re in the world, happy that you live next door, happy that you own those ridiculous rubber-duck pajamas and that goofy apron—”
She hug-tackles me.
“Me, too. Happy. And I’m in love with you, too. I love you.”
“I love you.”
I reach a hand out and cup her chin. Then we’re kissing again.
A long time passes before we come up for air.
Chapter 48
Elle
“What will you do while we’re gone?”
Jonah asks this in a tone of utter innocence that both cracks me up and breaks my heart. Kids, I tell you. Not too long from now—four years? five?—everything will be loaded with double meanings as their focus shifts from tag and board games to the hormones destroying their equilibrium, but for right now, Jonah’s polite inquiry means exactly what he says:
What are you and my dad going to do with yourselves while Madden and I are at camp? What do parents do without their children to entertain them and provide them with meaningful caretaking tasks?
Beside me, in the driver’s seat, Sawyer is waging an epic battle against his desire to laugh; I can feel his body shaking. One month after our (earth-moving) makeup, we’re in my car together en route to drop-off for the outdoor adventure camp. The boys’ stuff is jammed into the trunk, and the boys themselves are squirming with excitement and anticipation in the backseat. As we pull up to the drop-off spot—the parking lot outside Katie’s Sporting Goods—I put on my best flight attendant voice and remind them to obey the “fasten seatbelt�
�� sign until the vehicle has come to a complete stop and the driver has turned off the sign.
Needless to say, the instant the car comes to a stop, they are both out of their seatbelts and out the doors, racing toward Brooks. Because what is better in life than a chance to spend five days with Uncle Brooks and a bunch of other pre-teens, enjoying the great outdoors?
The chance to be home alone without any kids around at all.
Just saying.
We follow the boys out of the car, grabbing their stuff from the trunk, and head Brooks’s way to drop it off. We listen to Brooks’s eloquently delivered speech about camper behavior and what will cause campers to get sent home (“Our boys will be fine unless someone’s gender identity gets stepped on,” I whisper to Sawyer), and then we hug and kiss the boys goodbye and head back to the car.
The boys kinda sorta know what’s going on. They know that Sawyer and I made up our “fight” and that we’re back to being friends. I think they might sort of suspect, in an innocent way, that we’re “special friends.” But even though Sawyer and I are pretty sure marriage is in our future (and probably our near future), we also think it’s a good idea to keep things simple for the boys until we make a public commitment. So we’re holding on to both houses, we’re each spending the middle of the night in our own bed…I’m not complaining. It’s been blissful.
But this week? Just the two of us? A whole week of sharing a house and a shower and a bed?
Super. Huge. Special. Treat.
Which is why, as we pull away from our offspring, neither of us is dwelling too much on how this is the boys’ first time away from home, or how much we’ll miss them, or even if they’ll be safe in Brooks’s hands (they will, Sawyer assures me, even if you’d never guess it from a passing acquaintance with Brooks).
“You know what I’m most looking forward to?” Sawyer asks. “Aside from waking you up in the middle of the night by going down on you.”
I make a small desperate noise, and he laughs.
“Drive faster,” I instruct.
But he doesn’t appear to be heading home.
“Where are you—?”
“Patience, grasshopper,” he says.
I give him a hard time (and I do mean hard, regaling him with all the things I could be doing to him if we were at home by ourselves right now) for the duration of the trip, until I realize: we’re headed to Maeve’s.
“Did you know they do a mean brunch?”
“I didn’t,” I say.
He gets us two seats at the new bar. It’s not quite like the old one, but I’m okay with that, because Sawyer is turning the old bar into a big, circular table that’s perfect for family game night.
Maeve’s new decor is, well, just like the old decor, and that’s as it should be.
“Two mimosas,” Sawyer tells the bartender. “And brunch menus, please.”
“Are we…celebrating something?” I ask.
“You never answered my question.”
“What question?”
“ ‘You know what I’m most looking forward to?’ ”
I laugh. “Oh, right. You distracted me before I could answer.”
“I’m looking forward to falling asleep with you in my arms.”
“Ah, me, too. Too bad it’s only four nights.”
“So that’s the thing, Elle.”
He’s fumbling with something in his pocket, and all of a sudden, my hands and feet go cold, and my heart starts pounding—in the best possible way.
The bartender sets the mimosas on the bar in front of us, but we both ignore them. I’m too busy looking into Sawyer’s dark, intense eyes, and he’s looking back, but this time I know what the expression is there, it’s love and trust and devotion, and he opens the little velvet box in his hand and holds it out to me.
“I know it’s fast. But I also know that life is short, and I know how I feel. I want us to be a family. I want the boys to be brothers. And I want to fall asleep with you in my arms, not just for the next four nights, but every night for the rest of our lives. Elle Dunning, will you marry me?”
I look at his beloved face, the eyes that still hold a hint of grief but also so much joy and lust for life, and I don’t have to think about it at all.
“Oh, Sawyer. Yes. Yes, yes, yes!”
He takes the ring from the box and slides it on my finger. Applause breaks out—the bartender is clapping and so are a lot of other people in the restaurant. I feel like clapping myself, but instead I examine the ring on my finger—it’s a solitaire, round diamond. Restrained and eloquent, like Sawyer, I think.
“Kiss me?” I whisper.
“You remember what happened last time?” he murmurs.
As it turns out, neither of us is that hungry. Shame about those mimosas going to waste, though…
Since it’s daylight, we do the rest of Maeve’s patrons, and ourselves, the favor of getting ourselves home before he kisses me.
Chapter 49
Sawyer
ONE MONTH LATER
Not long after Elle and I get engaged, Chase and Liv have a gonzo barbecue. Kids are invited, so we take the boys and bring a six-pack of IPA and some potato salad. Chase and Liv throw great parties. I think it’s because Liv is good at the detail stuff—lighting, food, seating—and Chase is good at making sure everyone has a good time, mostly via beer and music. Brooks is there, of course, and Jack—a guy Brooks used to work construction with—and his wife and kids, as well as Eve, who is both the Realtor who got me my rental and, I learn, Liv’s best friend. Plus about a million other people, some of whom I recognize, most of whom I don’t. There are some older people among the crowd, who I assume must be Chase’s and Liv’s parents. It crosses my mind to wonder why they’re there, but my question gets answered before too long when Chase clinks a glass and says he has an important announcement.
He puts his arm around Liv and declares that they’re engaged and planning to get married next June.
“Must be in the water,” Elle murmurs to me. We’re planning a Christmas wedding.
The boys were ecstatic, by the way, to hear that Elle and I were planning to get married. We told them they can have a special part in the ceremony to commemorate officially becoming brothers, but I think their main obsession was whether it would still count as a sleepover if they each had their own room in Elle’s house.
Eve is working on finding a buyer for the house Jonah and I have been living in, and meanwhile, I’m putting the finishing touches on the house’s bathrooms and finally getting around to the exterior painting and roofing projects. But of course I’m leaving myself enough time for furniture-building—the catalog pieces are selling as fast as I can construct them, and I’m loving the extra income. What with the furniture money and Elle’s advance on Splitsville, we’ve added a few new board games to our collection and promised the boys a fun family vacation next summer…
People flock around Liv and Chase, admiring Liv’s ring and congratulating both members of the happy couple, and Elle and I drift over to the food. There is a crazy selection of salads. I sample all of them, but honestly, I think the potato salad Jonah and I made is the best. Or I’m just not one for the super-fancy salad thing. I mean, arugula and sautéed shiitakes with mint? No thanks. I’ll take macaroni or potato or Caesar.
“It’s going to be a long year,” Brooks says, appearing suddenly at my side.
“How so?”
“I’m Chase’s best man.”
I raise an eyebrow. “That’s great, Brooks!”
“No. Not really.”
“Um, why not? Two in a year too much?” Brooks is my best man, too, obviously. But I don’t think either Chase or I are going to expect very much, work-wise, from him. A, because neither of us is going to want a super-fancy wedding, and B, because, well, Brooks. You have to go to war with
the army you have. So I wouldn’t have thought a double gig was something to fear.
“No, it’s not that. It’s the maid of honor.” He lowers his voice. “Eve.”
My eyes find her, a wild corona of honey-colored hair atop a beautiful, curvy figure. “Eve? She’s my Realtor. She rented me the house. I mean, she brokered the rental. She’s nice. And efficient. She’ll probably make your job easy. She seems like the type who’ll just take charge of all the detail work, and you can turn your full attention to the bachelor party.”
“I know she’s nice. And efficient.” His eyes dart, looking hunted. “I slept with her.”
I raise both eyebrows. “Oh-ho. That’s the one? Eve is the one you slept with? That’s…”
“Complicated,” Brooks says sadly.
“You don’t do complicated.”
“I know. I would never have done it if I’d known there was a chance in hell Chase and Liv would get together, let alone married.”
Yeah, that would have come as a bit of a shocker. I have to resist the temptation to laugh. How inconvenient, to have a one-night stand that you can never, ever get away from…
“Well,” I say, not even attempting to keep my amusement under wraps. “As a wise man once said to me, you gotta be careful with sex. It’s like a black hole, and before you know it you’ve been sucked into something that even the world’s best scientists don’t know shit about.”
Brooks gives me a lingering view of his middle finger as he stomps away.
Personally? I think it’s less like a black hole and more like a view of the night sky. Like when you see the whole Milky Way galaxy laid out above you, glistening with stars and stardust. My eyes find Elle, across the crowd. I watch her for a moment. Eating absurd salads, chatting with Liv and Eve, leaning in to converse earnestly with Madden and Jonah, her hair brighter than the candlelight. She looks up suddenly, smiles in my direction, a secret, gorgeous smile.
I smile back.
It is a perfect evening. There is nothing I love more than watching her light up the night.