Four months ago
“Keep them closed.”
“Why?” I whined. “This isn’t as fun as it looks in the movies. I’m going to face plant or something.”
A hearty chuckle sparked every one of my available senses. “Where’s the trust, Jem-Jem?”
“Up your ass, courtesy of my foot if I get injured.”
He stopped, turning me to the side, and lifted the blindfold. “Is that anyway to speak to your fiancé?” He dropped to one knee on a paved driveway.
My gasp shook my lungs, and I looked behind him to the red and cream home. Quaint, new, and surrounded by tiny hedges.
“Miles …?”
“Down here.” He laughed.
“Shit.” I exhaled, returning my attention to him and the ring that glinted in the afternoon sun. “You’re …?” I swallowed over the tears invading my throat. “You want to marry me?”
“It’s not a question,” he said, voice quiet but resolute. “I am going to marry you. You’re going to be Mrs. Fletcher.”
I sniffed, my head bobbing uncontrollably. “Okay.” I nodded again. “Oh, my god, okay.”
Miles laughed, shaking his head. “This isn’t going how I planned. But Jem, I love you. I want you with me all the time. In that house behind me, in my bed beside me, and if you agree to take this ring, I promise I’ll cherish you for the unexpected gift you are.”
I was full-blown crying by that stage, unable to see his face or anything around me through the blur of tears. “Stop it,” I said, sniffing and roughly wiping my hands over my wet cheeks. “I said okay.”
He pulled me to his lap, where I straddled him in the middle of the driveway in the middle of the afternoon and let him slide the glittering diamond ring onto my finger.
“Sorry,” I said once I’d finally calmed down a little. “I kind of had an emotion explosion.”
“If you hadn’t, I would have wondered who I was asking to be my wife.” Some unnamed emotion skittered across his face as I smiled down at him. He kissed the ring on my finger, then lifted his T-shirt to wipe my cheeks with it. “I’ve got you, Jem-Jem. I swear.”
“Dad, could you please just give him a chance?” I whispered in the kitchen.
The same one I used to slide into in my socks every winter when the floor was cold and extra slippery.
He sighed, taking the towel from me and hanging it up. “He didn’t ask my permission.”
I groaned. “We don’t live in that kind of world anymore.”
He stabbed a finger at me after popping the tab on his beer can. “Exactly. And we’re all doomed because of it.”
I crossed my arms, leaning back against the kitchen counter with a brow raised.
Dad sighed. “Jesus Christ. I’ll try, okay?” He looked out the small window in the kitchen, the one that granted a view of the dining and living room beyond, and didn’t even try to lower his voice. “I don’t trust him.”
That wasn’t the first time I’d heard that. Miles met my dad briefly when we’d invited him out for lunch not long after we’d started dating, and Miles had been called into work halfway through.
“A man who gives a damn puts his woman’s needs first. Always,” he’d said after Miles had apologized profusely before jetting out the door of the coffee shop.
He had a backward, old-fashioned way of looking at things. Always had. He’d never liked my high school boyfriend, and he didn’t even know about the one I had in college, but he had no problem with Hope’s husband, Jace, or the many boyfriends she’d had before him.
Hope said it was because I was the baby, which I found ridiculous. I might’ve been a dreamer, but I’d always been far more responsible than my older sister.
Being that she was four years older than me, my early teens were filled with memories of her sneaking out, sneaking back in, and ditching school to hang out at the local skate park on the outskirts of town. Kind of stupid, if you asked me, seeing as Dad was Lilyglade’s sheriff at the time, and word always got back to him.
He’d retired two years ago to concentrate on the small farm we had. Maintaining it became a full-time job when he let go of the help he’d had while working.
I thought it would keep him busy enough that he wouldn’t grow more cynical, but I should’ve known better.
“Everything okay?” Miles asked, walking into the kitchen with some empty plates.
“Fine,” I said, taking them from him with a smile.
He leaned down to kiss my forehead, inhaling a deep breath and whispering on an exhale so low I almost didn’t catch it, “Let it go, babe. He’ll come around in his own time.”
My dad watched Miles leave the kitchen with a twist to his lips. “Look, Jemmie.” He took a large pull of his beer, then looked at me. “I’ll wait for this shitshow to blow up, and I’ll be here when it happens. But in the meantime, he’s not getting any of my fucking beer.”
He left the kitchen, muttering something that sounded like, “Bad enough he eats my god damned food.”