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Sadie and I moved in with Cillian not too long after that fateful night in Boston, but not too soon either. We started with some sleepovers to ease Sadie into the idea. Well, that’s what we told ourselves anyway. She was ready from the day he moved that bed into her room. But when you’ve made years of mistakes, you get a little gun shy. Perhaps we’re overthinking everything now, but I imagine that will fade along with unseen scars we left on each other.
“Ready for bed,” he says as he nuzzles my temple.
“Mmhmm,” I say, though I dread leaving our cozy nest, too.
“You go, I’ll clean up and grab Sadie’s letter.” She leaves it in the same spot, safely tucked under the pillow on her bed.
“Okay,” I say, quickly jumping up. The cold air tingles my skin, but Cillian warms it back up with a light swat to my ass. After game sex is on my agenda. It’s my favorite kind of sex, because he uses all that pent up adrenaline that still lingers in his veins, never failing to work me into the same sort of frenzy before we both collapse with exhaustion.
I beeline it into the bathroom for my nightly routine. An array of my beauty products has taken over a good portion of the vanity. Once, I suggested maybe he’d want a bigger place now that Sadie and I are here, too. Cillian shut that down quickly, he prefers us all being atop each other and said that my stuff everywhere only makes it feel more like home. I get it, because I feel the same. Home is walking through the front door and it immediately smells like him. Even if that smell is stinky hockey man.
Sadie’s been skating more. She’s always enjoyed it, but now she wants a stick and a puck whenever she’s on the ice. I have a feeling I’m going to have a stinky hockey girl smell in my future, as well.
“You found it?” Cillian is sitting on the end of the bed when I come out of the bathroom, our daughter’s crayon scrawled note in his hand.
“Same place as always,” he answers with a big grin that says he’s up to something.
“What did she mean by just do it?” She was adamant that the letter ended with the words just do it daddy. I asked her what she wanted him to do and all I got as an answer was her little laughter.
“She wants me to give you a letter tonight.”
“You write me letters all the time.”
“This one has something else that goes along with it,” he says. “Check under your pillow.”
“What are you two up to now?” It’s typical of Sadie to form special connections with each adult in her life, she’s always done that. But the relationship between her and Cillian is next level. They’re constantly putting their heads together and making up some sort of game or making special plans that usually end with a surprise for me or any one of our family members.
Cillian answers with nothing more than a raised eyebrow. Lifting my pillow, I freeze at what I find. An ivory envelope with both my name in Cillian’s handwriting, and Mommy in Sadie’s. Next to it sits a pretty round ring box.
“Cillian.”
“Open the envelope first.”
Isla,
That first day I met you, I fell in love with the girl who rolled her eyes at a boy who would go onto be a league leading goal scorer three years running. That love only grew when you asked me why I wanted to date you at sixteen. You never saw yourself for what you are.
You’ve always called me Superstar, but in my life the star has always been you. My true North, my guiding light. The one thing that’s always been true.
You don’t lie, you don’t sugarcoat. You’re supportive without conditions.
Next to Sadie, you’re the best thing in my life. And she shines brighter than the sun because she came from you.
We talked about me asking you to marry me. I said I was pretty sure you’d say yes. She said, ‘I know that’s right’. Then she told me I had to ask you in a letter and hide it under your pillow.
So here it is.
Please, Isla, will you marry me?
Cillian
Under his words, Sadie wrote a few of her own.
Mommy,
Can we all be Wild now?
Sadie
