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He nodded once. “I’ll fix it. Now let’s go.”
“You’re coming with me?” I asked in surprise.
He nodded once. “I am.”
I blew out a breath of air. “Good. I didn’t want to do that alone. I have no clue what I’m doing.”
***
Darby
“This one?” the saleslady asked curiously.
I shook my head.
“No,” I admitted. “I want something different. Something one of a kind.”
“Something that’s going to be really pretty, and sparkly,” Georgia ordered.
I snorted. “She asked me to paint my truck sparkly purple for her.”
Georgia’s eyes glittered with laughter. “You should do it for her. For Christmas.”
I shook my head. “I don’t have enough money to get both a paint job and a ring. So I’m going to settle for the ring now.”
“What about a purple amethyst stone set with a black diamond? In a black gold ring?” The lady’s eyes lit. “We have one… but I’m warning you. It’s expensive.”
She wasn’t kidding.
When she brought it out and I saw the price tag, I had a mini myocardial infarction.
I.e., a goddamn heart attack.
“Fuck,” I murmured, seeing the price.
“This is the one,” Georgia said. “Sorry, brother.”
I knew what she meant.
It was the one.
It was also nine goddamn thousand dollars.
And perfect.
“I’ll take it.”
Thirty minutes later, I was heading home.
When I pulled into the yard, I went to park in front of the trailer and came to a sudden halt when I saw it was no longer there.
I got out next to the house and looked around.
“What the hell?” I said.
Nobody was there to answer me, and it was only when Waylynn banged out of the old house with her box of shit that I found someone to question.
“Where the hell is the trailer?” I asked curiously.
She walked across the yard and to the new house, straight inside, and didn’t say one single word.
I followed behind her to find her walking toward the part of the house that was meant to be mine.
When I followed her, it was to find all of my shit out of my room in the old house now in the new house.
“Move, bitch,” Candy ordered as she poked me in the back with a box.
I moved, watching as Candy came in with a box of what looked to be my bathroom stuff.
“Go get some of your shit,” she ordered. “Then the rest of us can get our own stuff.”
Candy left with Waylynn fresh on her heels.
She left just as quickly as she came, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
That was until Ace came in the room carrying my mattress.
I blinked.
“What in the hell is going on?” I barked.
Ace tossed the bed down onto the box springs then turned to go.
Only he didn’t go. He stopped at the door and slammed it closed with him on the wrong side.
I frowned hard when he turned around, giving me his gaze.
His gaze that was surprisingly no longer hostile in any way.
“I was wrong.”
I blinked.
“I’ve been treating you like a kid, and I apologize,” he continued.
Still, I didn’t talk.
“You’re the baby… and I guess it just hurt when you said you were leaving. I felt like you didn’t want to be here anymore, and I reacted like an asshole,” he continued.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“So you’re moving back in,” he said. “And your girl sold the RV, so you have no other choice, whether you’re mad at me or not.”
With that, he walked up to me and threw his arms around me in a bear hug.
I had no other choice but to take it.
“Your girl decided to sell the trailer so you could have your land,” he said. “You don’t deserve her.”
He stepped back after a long few moments, then narrowed his eyes.
“You’re going to marry her, right?”
I numbly pulled the ring out of my pocket that I’d gotten at lunch.
He grinned when I opened the box.
“That’s…”
The door opened and Waylynn walked in, her eyes coming to me and the ring I was holding out for Ace to see.
“Wow,” she said. “Did I interrupt something?”
I rolled my eyes, then got down onto one knee.
“No,” I said. “But now that we’re on this subject… Waylynn Jennings, will you marry me?”
Spoiler alert: she said hell yes.Epilogue
Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to be douchebags.
-Waylynn to Darby
Waylynn
Three years later
“Throw it!”
I turned to see Georgia, Candy, Desi, and Codie all standing there.
Codie had her baby in her arms, and she was reaching up high with one arm, urging me to throw the bouquet.
I grinned, turned around, and tossed it over my head.
None of them caught it.
In fact, the reason that none of them caught it was mostly due in part to the fact that I’d tossed it over the pen’s fence that I’d been standing in front of and landed in the bull’s pen where Scooby was.
Scooby who most definitely hadn’t liked the fact that we were standing so close to his territory.
