Page 39 of Reeve
“Can you just…trust me?” he asks, glancing at me quick as he turns into the campground parking lot.
“Okay.”
All of my siblings’ cars and trucks are parked in front of the lodge, so Aaron needs to park a little ways away. We walk up to the lodge hand in hand.
“Are you gonna ask me again?” I blurt out.
“Yeah,” he answers honestly. “That’s the plan.”
We stop at the top of the lodge stairs. Inside, through the windows, I can see everyone I love mingling together, carols on the stereo, champagne glasses in hand.
There’s my dad talking to Aaron’s dad.
And there’s Joe twirling five-year-old Wren around the living room while Harper holds baby Talon.
Gran holds one of Parker’s twins, while Paw Paw holds the other, and Parker, Quinn, and Emily Anne dance in a jolly circle to “Jingle Bells.”
A pregnant McKenna checks out the Christmas ornaments on Gran’s huge tree with four-year-old Madden while Tanner sways to the music with their one-year-old daughter, Piper.
Sawyer and Ivy cuddle together on the couch with their newborn daughter, Rebecca, while Isabella and Hunter, expecting their second, coo over Sawyer’s first.
My heart swells with a million kinds of love, and I turn to Aaron.
“Ask me now, instead.”
“Here? On the porch?”
“Here. At home. With everyone I love a breath away.” I reach for his cheek and cup it tenderly. “But let’s have a moment to ourselves first.”
He grins at me, taking a small, red box from his pocket, and lowering himself to a knee. When he looks up at me, all the love in the whole world shines in his eyes.
“What’s going on in there? That sense of family? All those siblings and children and parents and love? I see it all, Reeve. I know it’s real. And yet, I can’t believe it holds a candle to everything I feel when I look at you.”
Tears burn my eyes, but I nod at him to continue.
“I’ve loved you for so long, baby, I don’t know what life looks like if I’m not loving you, if I’m not with you.”
He opens the ring box, and a gorgeous diamond solitaire catches the light from inside and sparkles.
“Marry me, Reeve?”
“Oh, yeah,” I tell him, plucking the ring from its velvet bed and slipping it onto my finger. “You’re all mine, baby. Forever.”
He stands up and pulls me into his arms, kissing me like we’ve never kissed before (even though we have…a lot.)
When we walk into the lodge a minute later, I’m an engaged college graduate holding hands with my fiancé.
The youngest of the Stewarts of Skagway.
The last to find her happily ever after.
Unless we can convince my dad—
No.
Definitely not.
If anything, that’s a faraway story for another day.
A very, very faraway story for…
THE END (again)
(for now)
