“I’ll be done,” he assures me.“Colter has baseball practice, and the coach has to be there.”He grins.
“Damn, we’re getting old,” I tell him.
“We are.You ever plan on making me an uncle?”
I don’t know how I keep a straight face and not let my happiness about our baby shine through.“Yeah, Chan, I plan on making you an uncle.I just got my girl back,” I remind him.
“I figured you’d have a ring on her finger by now,” he says.
“Got the ring,” I admit.I don’t tell him that I have two rings, because there’s no point bringing up the past.I bought her a new one earlier this week, and it was my lucky day that they had her size in stock.
“What in the hell are you waiting on, Cope?”
“I already asked her,” I admit.“But I didn’t have the ring.It was one of those moments where I didn’t want another second to pass by without knowing she’s mine forever.Now, I need to do it the right way.”
“You need any help?”
“I think I’m good, man.But if I do, you’ll be the first person I call.”
“Well, get on with it, will ya?My kids need some cousins, and I want to be Uncle Chandler while I can still have fun with them.”
“You’re forty, not eighty,” I remind him.
“Hey, eighty-year-olds can still have fun,” he jokes.“But really, I want to see you happy, Cope.I know marriage and kids with Ellison was always the plan.I’m glad after all these years, you’re getting the life you wanted.”
“Me too, brother.Me too.”
He slaps me on the back, and we both head to our trucks.I follow him out of the driveway to Magnolia Estates.He waves as he keeps on moving to the barn, while I park outside the inn and head inside to get Ellison.
I find her in her office, staring out the window.“Penny for your thoughts,” I say, stepping inside.
She turns to face me with a smile on her face.“Hey, Cope.”
“Hi, baby.You ready for today?”
She nods, her eyes glassing over with unshed tears.“There’s going to be more of this,” she says, smiling and pointing at her eyes.“I just… It’s all happening, Copeland.Everything we ever dreamed of, and while I’m thrilled, I’m also still hurt.My mom—I’m having a hard time getting past what she did.”
Moving around her desk, I crouch down beside her chair, and she turns to face me.“She loved you, Ells.I don’t know that I forgive her for taking you from me, but she kept my letters.I’d like to think that eventually she would have done the right thing.”
“That doesn’t make it better, and she wrote that letter to me because she was never going to tell me.”
“I don’t know.I think she wrote that letter out of guilt, and in the off chance something did happen, she wanted to explain the best way she knew how.Think about finding my letters in the attic with no explanation at all.At least we know why.”
“Yeah,” she agrees.
“Have you read them yet?”She was so upset when we found them on Sunday that she carried them down to her room but didn’t want to open them.
“No.”She shakes her head.“I know they’re going to break me open, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.I know they exist.I know you wanted me, and that our own miscommunication also played a big role in what kept us apart.I want to read them, but I don’t know if I’m ready yet.”
“They’re yours, and they’ll be there when you’re ready, and if you’re never ready, that’s okay, too.We’re looking forward, not backward, and we have so much happiness in front of us, baby.It’s okay to never read them and to let the past stay where it belongs—behind us.”
“It’s just so hard to feel so deliriously happy and so sad at the same time.”
My heart hurts for her.I hate to see her sad.I understand, and I’m pissed, too, but for me, I got my girl back.She’s going to be my wife, and we’re having our first baby.I’m on cloud nine, even knowing we were sabotaged by her mom.
I do feel like her mother meant well.Kathy Moran loved her daughters fiercely, and I think that love led her to make a choice she knew was wrong but didn’t know how to come back from without her daughter hating her.Should she have done it?No, but she did, and we’re still here, in love, and living the rest of our lives together.
“I wish I could carry this for you,” I tell her, gripping her thighs lightly.
