by Julia London
“You’re not saying anything again,” he said, a little nervously.
All Kyra knew was how much she loved this man, with all her heart, with every bit of her being, and how much she missed him and needed him. But marriage? She couldn’t even grasp the idea of it.
“Do you still love me?” he asked.
She groaned. “My God, how I love you, Dax. More than anything, can’t you tell? But I don’t know what to say. Ruby is . . . this is not—”
“Hey, no one’s proposing here,” he said quickly.
“You just said—”
“I said I want to marry you. But I didn’t ask you, did I? I’m not going to propose to you now, Kyra. Because I don’t want you to think I’m proposing because I feel sorry for you and the coconut. I don’t feel sorry for you, I feel great about you two. I’m just going to wait for the right moment, when you come back to East Beach.”
Kyra was stunned. She felt almost on the verge of hysterical laughter. Happy, frantic laughter. This man loved her, and she was not expecting it, and she was feeling glittery and warm inside. And yet there were so many questions. She didn’t even know if Ruby’s tumor was benign, if she would recover completely. And her care team was here. Not in East Beach. “I don’t yet know—”
“Nope,” he said and held up his hand. “Don’t say anything. I just told you, this is not a proposal. All I’m saying is that I’m going to propose to you. But I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
She grabbed his hands with both of hers. “Dax! You’re not making sense.”
“Yes, I am. Listen to me, Kyra—I’m going to wait for you at East Beach. And if you decide you don’t want to or can’t come back there, then so be it. I’m a grown man, I will understand. But at least I’ll know I didn’t let you go without telling you how much . . . how much I love you,” he said, his voice breaking again. “And how much I want to spend my life with you and the coconut. And Jonathan. And whoever else comes along. But I’m putting the ball in your court, babe.”
“My God,” she said and shook her head with confusion. “No pressure there, right?”
He smiled a little. “Would you rather I kept that all to myself?”
Kyra snorted. “No,” she said. God, no. No matter what else happened to her and Ruby, she would always have this moment in this antiseptic cafeteria in Indianapolis, and she wouldn’t forget a moment of it. She wouldn’t forget how huge her heart felt right now, overflowing with love and affection and pride. “What you just said is the most beautiful nonproposal speech I’ve ever heard in my life, and I’ll never forget it,” she said, pressing her hand to her heart. “I feel it in my heart. I’ll keep it there forever. I love you, Dax. Even more, now,” she said with a sheepish smile. “But there are still a lot of unknowns about Ruby’s health. Even in the best-case scenario, there’s a lot of aftercare involved, and she has her doctors and the nursing team here, and she’s comfortable with them, and she needs to be closely monitored, and I can’t risk the excellent health care she is getting here.”
“I understand,” he said.
“Do you? Because I would get in your truck right this minute and go anywhere you wanted to go, and be whoever you wanted me to be. I would. But I can’t right now, and every waking moment has been about Ruby, and I’ve hardly had time to feed myself, much less think about the next day or the next.”
“I know,” he said sympathetically. “I get it. I honestly don’t want you to think about this now, okay? I just want you to know that the door is wide open,” he said and tapped his chest.
She’d already walked through it. He would take a piece of her with him today, because she was already in there. “You are the best thing that ever happened to us, do you know that?” she asked softly.
“I think I got the better end of the deal.” He slid out of the booth and held out his hand to her. “Let’s go see what the coconut is up to.”
Kyra slipped her hand into his and stood up. But before he could turn away, she caught his chin in her hand and pulled his face around. She rose up on her toes and kissed him softly, with all the love and tenderness she felt for him brimming out of her. Nothing had changed for her except that once she had loved this man beyond measure. Now she loved him beyond reason.
But she didn’t know when, if ever, she could return to East Beach.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A few days after Dax returned from Indianapolis, he got a text from Kyra with a huge smiley face and the word benign.
He was so overcome with emotion at the news that he fell into a chair in his kitchen and buried his face in his hands . . . until Otto began to lick them.
Two weeks after he returned from Indianapolis, he got another text. This one included a picture of a gap-toothed Ruby. Her hair had been cut short to match where they’d shaved her head for the surgery. Kyra wrote, Ruby returned to school today and told everyone a pirate had scalped her. She attached a GIF of a woman drinking from a giant wineglass.
The coffee tables Dax made were so good that people were wanting copies. And then they wanted more—hutches, craft tables, dining tables, headboards. He was busier than he’d ever been. He never went to the Green Bean anymore, either—he went to Teaneck to spend time with Jonathan. He’d scouted out a few houses in Teaneck, a couple of workshops he could rent. But he hadn’t yet pulled the trigger, because he’d promised two coconuts he’d be right here, waiting.
He worked all week, and on weekends, he and Otto drove around looking for unusual wood. They picked up pallets and drove by lumber yards, estate sales, and demolitions. He was so busy he didn’t see any of the usual characters—Wallace had started sending a delivery truck to him so that Dax could finish all the work Wallace had lined up for him.
Kyra called him most weeks so that he could speak to Ruby. She said she’d found a job at an upscale restaurant and the tips were decent. He wanted to ask her what her plans were, but he didn’t—he’d promised he wouldn’t, and usually she was full of talk about Ruby’s progress with the rehabilitation and the testing.
When she asked about him, he told her about his work and Jonathan. But his heart was aching—he wanted them to come home.
Ruby had her seventh birthday. Kyra texted him photos of her Barbie party, which Ruby had arranged in the massive house he’d built—and from the look of the photo, it took up most of the room in their little apartment. Kyra said that Ruby’s doctor said her progress was good. But that’s all she said.
Just before the holidays, Kyra called him. “Hey, how are you?”
“Good,” he said. But he’d felt on pins and needles. He had a fear she was going to tell him she wasn’t coming back to East Beach. “I’m getting ready to fly out to see my folks,” he said, just so he could head off any bad news before he flew to Arizona.
“We just wanted to wish you a happy Thanksgiving,” she said and put Ruby on the phone.
He and Ruby talked a moment—that is, Ruby talked and he said uh-huh a lot—and then she mentioned that they were going to her father’s house for Thanksgiving. “We’re going to eat a fried turkey!”
Dax’s belly did a weird little flip when she said it. Not over the fried turkey, but the fact that she was spending Thanksgiving with her biological father. He was a fool to think he could ever compete with that.
“Oh geez, I should have noted the time,” Kyra said, taking the phone back. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to get to work. Happy Thanksgiving!” she said cheerfully and hung up.
The texts continued to come—usually pictures of Ruby, usually asking for pictures of Jonathan—but Kyra said nothing about returning to East Beach. Not a single word.
Dax began to despair that she would. He wondered if she and he had been put into some kind of friend zone and he was too dumb to know it. It wouldn’t be the first time the signs were all there and he hadn’t seen them. Three months had passed since Kyra and Ruby left, and Ruby was in school and thriving by all accounts, and Kyra was working, and there wasn’t any sign, not
a single sign, that they were coming back to him.
He began to give himself pep talks. He’d said what he’d had to say, and he’d meant it, all of it. If Kyra wasn’t coming back, well . . . he’d have to man up and face facts.
But he was crushed by it.
A week before Christmas, he was sanding down some wood in the shed to use in making a hutch when Otto barked, leapt up, and ran out the door. That was followed by the sound of voices and car doors slamming.
“Great. Neighbors.” He tossed down his gloves and reached for a towel, then heard a young girl squeal with delight. “Down!” she said. “Down!”
His heart stopped beating. Just stopped, like it couldn’t take any more surprises. He slowly put down the towel and walked to the open door of his shed in disbelief. There was a girl crawling under his fence. She had curly red hair, but it was short. And she was wearing the light-up shoes. Blue ones. With the face of a princess emblazoned on them.
Ruby Coconuts was suddenly on his side of the fence.
“Stop licking my face!” she cried laughingly as Otto attacked her with his tongue.
In the drive of Number Three was the Subaru, just as if it had always been there. And leaning into the open hatch was a backside he knew very well. She had on jeans and boots and a sleeveless jacket over a long-sleeved T-shirt. As she backed out, holding a box, her hair spilled around her face and her shoulders.
“Guess what?” Ruby shouted from the fence. “Mr. McCauley said we could live here!”
Dax was too stunned to speak. He looked at her, then to Kyra.
“GUESS WHAT?” Ruby shouted again, only louder.
“I heard you, Coconut,” he said and made his feet move—stumbling, really—across the lawn to the fence.
“I mean, what are the odds?” Kyra asked cheerfully. “That Number Three would be available?”
He wasn’t sure what was happening, but it felt like Christmas and New Year’s and a shiny new table saw all rolled into one. “I, ah . . . I wasn’t expecting you,” he said uncertainly.
Her eyes were sparkling with delight. And love. He could see it. He could feel it. “I know,” she said pertly.
“Are you back? I mean . . . did you come back?”
She laughed. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Could you maybe have mentioned it?”
She grinned. She looked antsy, and he had the idea she was going to explode with delight. “Nope. Ruby and I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Are you surprised? Are you surprised? Are you surprised?” Ruby asked, jumping up and down.
“Flabbergasted. You look like you’ve grown a foot, Coconut,” he said and roughly grabbed her up, hugging her.
“I know, I’m seven now! Mommy said we’re going to get married!”
Good God, his heart felt like it was going to burst open and spray rainbows all over that lawn. “Really?” he asked, looking at Kyra. “That’s odd—I haven’t asked your mom to marry me.”
“Well,” Kyra said giddily, “I meant if the offer still stands. Of course, I understood you to say the offer stands until I say otherwise. Isn’t that what you said? Or did I hear it wrong?”
He didn’t say anything. Frankly, he was afraid a tear might roll down his cheek if he spoke.
“Because . . . because I forgot to tell you something in Indianapolis,” she said as Ruby ran off to have a look at the cottage. Kyra put down the box she was holding.
“Oh yeah?”
“I forgot to tell you that I love you so much that if you don’t want to propose to me anymore, I will do something wildly outrageous about it, because I feel that strongly about it.”
“Like what?”
“Like . . . lock you in a room with Ruby and her Barbies, for starters.”
A small kernel of delight sprouted in his belly. “Doesn’t scare me.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding, contemplating. Her eyes were shining brightly, and Dax thought he could see hope and a bit of worry in them. “Then I’ll do something else. Maybe tie you up and cover you in honey and lick it off until you give.”
The kernel of delight turned into a different sort of delight altogether. “Bringing out the big guns, huh?”
“Oh, that’s only the beginning of my guns,” she said.
“I’m impressed,” he said. And in love. Completely, utterly in love with this woman. “What else?”
“Honestly?” Her nervous, giddy little smile faded, and he noticed she was holding the hem of her jacket in something of a death grip. “I would do whatever it took, Dax,” she said quietly. “Anything. Because there is never going to be another you for us. No one will ever fill our hearts like you have. No one. Ever.”
Good God, he was going to melt. Like a pat of butter, all over the grass—no one had ever said anything like that to him. “You’d do anything?”
She nodded. “Anything.”
Yep, his heart was going to burst into rainbows at any moment. He sighed. “Weren’t you a little smart-ass about it, making me wait without a single word? Not even a hint. I thought you weren’t coming back,” he said, reaching across the fence for her as Ruby galloped back to their side.
“I got here as soon as I could,” she said, grabbing onto his arms. “Because guess what happened two weeks ago?”
“What?”
“Let me tell him, Mommy!” Ruby shouted. “The doctor said I can be a normal girl and go to school, and run, and swim, and whatever I want, and I don’t have to go to the doctor anymore.”
Dax looked at Kyra for confirmation.
She nodded. Her eyes were glistening with tears now. “She’s got the all clear,” she said, choking on the words a little. “She’s to have biannual checkups, but there is no reason to expect anything other than a long and healthy life for her.”
That news was the best thing Dax had heard since the birth of Jonathan. But there was still a question or two lingering in his heart. “You don’t need his insurance?”
“Maybe. But it’s a done deal—until my situation changes, he’s covering her. Here. In East Beach. No matter the cost.”
What was that Dax was feeling in his chest? His heart swelling like a balloon? “So . . . you’re really here,” he said, still disbelieving. “You’ve really come back for us.”
“Dax . . . I came back in a heartbeat,” she said. “I came back for us, for all of us, for you and me and Ruby and Jonathan and Otto. I came back for that nonproposal, because I have thought of it every single day since you made it. And I’ll wait as long as it takes for you to make it, too. I’m here for good. I’m scheduled to take the real estate exam after the first of the year. Oh, and I’m on a sub list at the bistro. And I’ve got a place to live,” she said, nodding toward Number Three. “I mean, who knows how long I’ll have to wait for you to propose?”
“Who knows,” he said and reached across the fence and slipped his hands under her legs, picking her up and swinging her over to his side. He kissed her. “Did you mean to torture me?” he muttered and kissed her. “Because it was hell.”
“I meant to do it right,” she said. “Equal footing.”
He kissed her again, only deeper, with the swell of possibilities and love in his heart. With the joy and prospect of a new year, of a new beginning, of a family. He wished someone would kick him, just to make doubly sure he wasn’t deep in a dream.
“Stop kissing!” Ruby cried and threw her arms around their waists, pressing her face into his side.
Dax laughed. He let go of Kyra, tousled Ruby’s hair, then picked up the box. “Let’s get you moved in. What do you two think about a pizza tonight?”
“Awesome!” Ruby shouted and raced up to the porch steps of Number Three in shoes that burst a flash of colors with each step, and with Otto loping behind her. She opened the screen door and went in.
The screen door slammed behind her, as apparently the pneumatic arm had been knocked loose. But this time, Dax laughed about it—it was music to his ears.
&nbs
p; Epilogue
The following July Fourth holiday
It was only the second barbecue Dax had ever hosted. He still didn’t believe in barbecues, but Ruby had made friends with the O’Reilly children in Number Six, and she was desperate to show off her new backyard fort. The McCauleys had put it up for their grandchildren, but Ruby had full use of it. Or rather, she had full use of it when Otto didn’t walk up the plank and make himself at home. That old dog liked to lie there with his paws hanging out the door, his head propped against the side, watching the comings and goings on the lake.
Dax had bought a house in Teaneck over the winter, one near enough to his boy so he could see him every day, but one close enough to East Beach that he could see the coconuts every day, too. He still hadn’t proposed, as the timing had not yet been right, and neither of them seemed in a hurry. He and Kyra had committed to each other, and that’s what mattered. They were taking the time to know each other like a couple of sane people instead of rushing into anything.
Dax loved Kyra and Ruby more and more each day.
“I hate barbecues,” Dax groused as he opened another package of hot dogs.
“It will be all right,” Kyra assured him and patted his cheek. “Just relax.”
She’d recently gotten a job with a brokerage in Black Springs and had sold her first house. It wasn’t one of the million-dollar homes, but as she pointed out, “It’s more money than I would make in three months at the Lakeside Bistro.”
“How am I supposed to relax?” he demanded. “One of these bozos is going to complain about hot dogs, just you wait and see.” He had grumbled about the barbecue since coming up with the idea, but the truth was that he was a little eager to show off Jonathan, who was staggering around like a little drunk in his red overalls.
The sound of a car door slamming annoyed Dax next. “And they’re early,” he said, as if someone had personally insulted him by being careless with the time.
The first people to arrive were Janet and her new boyfriend, Ted, who was interested in getting Dax to invest in some sort of deal he had with a golf club manufacturer. They were accompanied by Wallace and Curtis, who wore matching plaid shirts and jeans. Dax asked if they were worried about getting lost in the crowd. Wallace suggested Dax might invest in a wardrobe, period.