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Maverick and I laugh, and she glances between us, confused. Then she yanks on my hand. “Mama, come on!”
“I’ve been summoned,” I tell Maverick.
“Go ahead, birthday girl,” he says. Addie turns to head out of the kitchen, eyes fixed forward, dragging me along behind her. Maverick takes the opportunity to smack my butt and shoot me a wicked grin.
After we eat dinner and cake and put Addie to bed, I finally get my shower and then go outside to sit on our back deck. It’s little more than a slab of concrete with a couple of foldable lawn chairs on it, but our backyard is spacious and hidden from the neighbors by big, leafy trees. It’s the perfect place to decompress at night.
The back door slides open, and Maverick joins me. He grimaces a little as he walks over to the empty chair, and I know that his leg is hurting. He hardly ever talks about his leg anymore, though. When the pain starts up, he takes a couple of Advil and goes on with his day.
“How was your birthday?” he asks, sinking into his chair and reaching out to tug mine closer.
“Clinicals were rough today,” I say honestly, tilting my head back to look at the sky. “But I had a good night.”
Maverick nudges my foot with his. “I got you another present.”
I look over at him, eyebrows raised. Earlier, I’d opened a small box containing an itinerary for a weekend at a beach resort in South Carolina next month. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He fiddles with something in his pocket. “I’m trying to top Addie’s. Hard to compete with the scrap of paper with three marker lines on it.”
I laugh. “Itwasa masterpiece.”
He grins at me, and then he pulls a ring box out of his pocket. My breath catches, and I press a hand to my chest. “I’m not getting down on one knee,” he says before I can get any words out, “because I need to explain first.”
“Maverick, you probably already spent too much on the trip. We agreed that you weren’t going to buy a—”
“That’s what I need to explain,” Maverick interrupts patiently. “I have a second job.”
“What?” I furrow my brow in confusion. “When would you have time for a second job?”
“On Saturdays from eight to noon.”
I stare at him. “That’s when you’ve been going to the gym.”
He smirks at me and pats his stomach. He’s still slender, but he doesn’t have much of a six-pack anymore. Every time I see his bare torso, I savor that subtle reminder that he chose me,us,over everything he could have had. “I’m really flattered that you think I’ve been doing four-hour workouts. I work thedeskat the gym on Saturday mornings.”
I’m staring at him, flabbergasted. Water drips from my wet hair down the back of my neck. “Why? And why would you lie to me about that?”
Maverick points at me. “I never lied. I always said that I was going to the gym, and I was.”
“You said youjoinedit.”
“I did! Every employee gets a free membership. The platinum one, not the basic.”
“Mav.”
He sighs, dropping his schtick, and bows his head as he fidgets with the box in his hand. “Because last year, you were still telling me we couldn’t afford an engagement ring or a wedding, and—and I just want to marry you so badly, Azalea. So I found a way to make some extra cash and saved up for this, and then I kept going so I could take you on a trip and propose to you there, but…” With a small, contrite smile, he slips out of his chair and goes down on one knee in front of me. “I got a little impatient.”
The first time Maverick asked me to marry him, there was no ring, and it wasn’t a grand gesture as much as a “sorry I got you pregnant, should we get married?” conversation over dinner. I was still in a constant state of worry about everything going on in our lives, and although I assured him that I did want to marry him, I requested that we focus on graduation and the baby for the time being. He respected that.
Then, in what felt like an instant, we moved, he started his job, Addie was born, and I started pharmacy school. Life was crazy, money was tight, and although we discussed marriage from time to time, I was very clear that I didn’t want him buying an engagement ring, and Idefinitelydidn’t want to devote my precious little free time to planning a wedding.
Now here we are, me in a tacky yellow lawn chair, him kneeling on top of a chalk drawing that our daughter made, and he’s flashing a diamond ring at me. I glance at it—it’s a solitaire diamond, simple and gorgeous, exactly what I wanted—but I find my eyes drawn to Maverick more.
“Azalea Jane,” he says softly, picking up one of my hands, “you are everything. Please marry me. I don’t care how, I don’t care where, I don’t care who comes—I’m just so tired of not being your husband.” He raises my hand to his lips, kissing the back of it. I give him a smile that I know is watery. “We can wait until you’re done with school if you want—although Iwastold that I could expect to start trying for a second baby around that time.”
I laugh, wiping a tear from my cheek. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Please, Zale,” he says, somber again, and I lean down to press my forehead against his. “Say you’ll marry me.”
