She crossed the yard at an angle, skirting the water fight—Jax and X had turned their guns on River, who was retreating toward the grill with his hands up and absolutely no intention of surrendering—and cut through the gap in the fence where the grass went long and soft at the creek’s edge.
“Hey, everything okay?”
Logan stepped back from his father, swiping quickly at his face with the sleeve of his hoodie.
“Yeah,” Bear said and cleared his throat. “Just needed to ask him something.”
Logan kept his face angled away, watching King plow into the creek, sending up a flock of geese. “I’m okay with it,” he muttered.
Greta blinked. “Okay with what?”
Logan grimaced like he regretted speaking already. “You. Staying. Or whatever.”
Her throat closed entirely. Before she could find a response, Logan turned and walked down toward King, hands back in his pockets. King bounded toward him, shaking water across his jeans, and Logan made a sound of protest that had no real heat in it.
She turned toward Bear. “What… was that about?”
He took both of her hands. His thumbs moved across her knuckles, back and forth, slow. “I had a whole thing planned. Dawn hike out to the ridge.” He looked at their hands. “But this is better.”
The creek ran softly behind them. King barked. Geese honked. Somewhere up the slope, River whooped at something in the water gun fight.
“What?” she breathed. She wasn’t an idiot. She knew exactly what was coming, and her heart hammered as he knelt in front of her.
“Greta, I’ve loved you since the first time you called me Sasquatch. Didn’t have a name for it then. I thought I was annoyed.”
She choked on a watery laugh. “Youwereannoyed. I wanted you to be annoyed. It was safer.”
Bear looked up at her from one knee in the long grass, his dark eyes steady. “I spent a long time telling myself I didn’t deserve this,” he said. “A future. A woman who looked at me like I was worth something. I almost talked myself out of asking.” His thumbs stilled on her knuckles. “Logan talked me out of talking myself out of it.”
He reached into his pocket. The ring was small and simple in his rough fingers—a thin band with a single stone, pale green, the color of the creek in spring. The color of her eyes.
“I want to build a house here.” He nodded past the creek. “On the south meadow. Ours. Dogs underfoot and Sunday dinners and Logan coming home to it for the rest of his life. I want forty years of you, Greta. If you’ll have me. Will you?—”
She said yes before he finished the sentence.
“—marry me?” he finished on a laugh.
“Yes,” she said again.
He closed his eyes for one brief second.
Then he slid the ring onto her finger and stood, and she was already reaching for him, already closing the distance, both hands fisting in the front of his flannel. He came down to meet her, his forehead dropping to hers, and she felt the long slow breath leave him — all that held tension, finally gone.
She stroked the back of his neck where his short hair met his nape. “Thisis why you were nervous.”
“Yeah, this is why.”
She pulled him the rest of the way down.
The kiss tasted like relief. Like coming home from somewhere very far away. His hands came up to cup her face, careful as he always was, and she went up on her toes to close the last half-inch between them and felt him smile against her mouth.
A cheer went up behind them. Someone whistled, someone else made a whooping noise.
Greta broke away laughing, her face pressed against Bear’s chest, and felt him shake with laughter.
His arms folded around her, and he tucked his chin on top of her head.
She turned just enough to see the crowd that had materialized at the fence line. Walker with his hat in his hands.Johanna with both palms pressed to her cheeks. Naomi with her arms crossed and a look of profound satisfaction on her face. X with two fingers in his mouth, was the source of the whistle. Even Alice was there, puppy in her arms, Jonah at her side, grinning with tears in her eyes.
