EPILOGUE I |

New Songs & New Rings

 

 

We were engaged when we were thirty-two.

Patrick bought a new truck and some boxer briefs.

Then, we bought a house.

It took us no time to set the ball in motion. Within the week, he moved out of the church lady’s garage apartment. I moved out of Kate’s basement, and we invaded the upstairs of his parents’ house while we shopped for houses with Meghan. It was important to both of us that she was happy, and that she accepted these new developments in her father’s life. So, together, we fell in love with a three-bedroom house over on Birch, deep in the heart of River Canyon’s historic district. Just a few houses down from where we grew up—from where we met.

It took four months for Mayor and town realtor Connie Fischer to get everything finalized, but the moment we were homeowners, Patrick dropped to one knee in the middle of our empty living room.

“Give me your hand,” he demanded, and when I did, he fished the gaudy green ring out of his pocket.

“Where did you find that?” I asked, my throat constricting. “And that’s the wrong hand, by the way.”

“No, it’s the right hand, and your mom found it a few years ago. She was going to give it to you, but I got to it first.”

He tried shoving the ring onto my finger with zero luck, and he looked up with raised eyebrows. “Jesus, baby, y’put on a few, haven’t ya?”

It needed some adjustments, but eventually, he got the ugly thing on, and when he started to stand, I glared at him.

“You’re not going to ask me?”

“Ask ya what?”

I rolled my eyes. “You know.”

“Hmm.” He narrowed his blue-green eyes, and shook his head. “Nah.”

Irritating Irish bastard.

Patrickinney.

He stood up, wrapping his arms around my waist in sync with mine around his neck. He lowered his mouth to my ear as he started to sway us back and forth in the vacant room, soon to be filled with a giant leather sectional and monstrous flat-screen TV.

“My phone is in my right back pocket. I need ya to take it out and press ‘play.’”

“You can’t do it yourself?” I laughed.

He shook his head. “Nah, I’m not lettin’ go.”

One hand left his neck to reach for his back pocket. I found the phone where he said it would be, and I found a song—a different song—queued to play.

“This isn’t—”

“Play it,” he said with a dimpled smile.

I did, and the plucking of guitar strings filled the inch of space between us, and we swayed. When Van Morrison’s distinctive voice accompanied the music, Patrick sang into my ear, the opening lyrics to “These Are the Days.”

Then, he whispered, “Back left pocket.”

With a shaking hand, I reached in to wrap my fingers around a little box. I took a deep breath, nervous, as though I hadn’t expected it, as though I hadn’t seen the moment coming for most of my life, and I faltered a bit.

“I can’t ask you, if ya don’t take it out,” he said, his lips moving against my ear, a chuckle trailing on his voice.

And that was all the motivation I needed to quit my stalling, and I pulled the box out, holding it in my trembling hand as Van continued to sing our new song about endless summers and magicians turning water into wine.

“Open it.”

I tucked the phone into the breast pocket of his t-shirt and used that hand, shaking even more than the other, to open the box with a creak. Inside, on its little pillowed bed, was a gold Claddagh ring with an emerald heart.

“It came all the way from Balbriggan,” he said with a smile, thinking about the little coastal town he hailed from nearly thirty years before. “So, now you’ll always have a part of where I came from.”

“I already do,” I said, my voice shaking with emotion.

“Kinsey, you’re such a little bitch,” he teased, his smile widening, and he released my waist. “Guess I better get down here again, huh.” And with that, he went back down on one knee, taking my left hand—the correct hand. “Kinsey …”

“Yes.”

“Not yet!” He laughed, and cleared his throat. “Kinsey—”

“Yes.”

“Ya don’t even know what I’m gonna say!”

I playfully rolled my eyes. “Okay, okay, I’ll let you be the man. Say what you’re going to say.”

“Thank you. Now, Kinsey McKenna, you have been my best friend since I was still in diapers.” I giggled, and he raised a warning brow. “Watch it. You want this, don’t you?”

I nodded, raising my other hand in my best oath-giving stance. “I swear I won’t interrupt you again.”

He sighed, unable to dull that excited twinkle in his eye. “Anyway, I have loved you since then, ever since your parents forced you onto my lawn. I have loved you through childhood, all the way into adulthood. I have loved you when things were perfect, when things were bad, and when things weren’t things at all, and I don’t plan on stoppin’ any time soon. So, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, will you do me the honor of changin’ your name to Kinsey Kinney?”

I laughed, tilting my head back to look at our ceiling. “Seriously, do you honestly not hear how incredibly stupid that sounds?”

“Nah.” I dropped my eyes back to his. Those beautiful, perfect eyes. “It sounds perfect.”

Kinsey Kinney. It didn’t quite sound like peanut butter, glued to the roof of my mouth. It didn’t stick. Both parts didn’t run together to create that irritating, delicious sound.

But it did have a certain ring to it. A cute little flair that I could rock, if it meant being his wife.

Mrs. Patrickinney.

“I guess I can learn to live with it,” I said, the vibration in my voice being the only telltale sign of my excitement.

“So, you’re saying yes?”

“I mean, we might as well, right?”

He nodded, both corners of his mouth curling. Two dimples. “Exactly what I was thinkin’. What else is there?”  

With his own adrenaline-shaky hands, Patrick took the liberty of sliding the beautiful, not-so-gaudy ring onto my finger—a perfect fit, no adjustments needed—and he stood to consummate the engagement with a hard kiss on the mouth. Fervent with twenty-nine years’ worth of friendship, firsts, and love that brought us to that moment.

His hands buried in my hair, grabbing and tugging; my hands around his neck, biting at his lip, coaxing his mouth open. It was my first time kissing my fiancé, and while he was the same Patrick with those same eyes and dimples, it was different somehow. Another change, but this change brought us closer together. This change was a step forward to solidifying the bond of our souls.

I pried my lips from him for a shred of air, only serving as encouragement for him to pepper his lips along my jaw and toward my neck.

“You know what I think?” I asked, my knees breaking down to putty under his skilled mouth.

His muffled response sent a shock straight to the part of my body that would have been screaming for his hardening erection, had it been given a voice, and I moaned on its behalf.

“We should, mm …” My eyelids fluttered, losing my train of thought, with little thanks to his gentle nips along my collarbone.

One of my hands brushed lightly over his tormented groin, restricted by jeans that suddenly appeared tighter than they were, and he responded with a throaty groan.

I imagined him wrapping my legs around his waist, using those handcuffs I had grown to appreciate in the months since we revived the most epic love story River Canyon had ever seen. I imagined being naked, bound, and helpless. Teased by a tongue so familiar with my body; it knew just when to start, when to stop, just to keep me teetering on that proverbial edge long enough to make me beg.

I fantasized, standing there in the living room, leaning against his hard body for support. I imagined the things he would do to me, to celebrate, and then … he stopped.

My eyes fixated on him, mouth gaped open, as I watched him grab our coats from the banister leading upstairs. “Patrick, you’ve got to be—”

“Sorry, babe. Got a little carried away, and as much as I’d love to make myself right at home between those legs and sing to you all night long, we have dinner plans.”

He handed my coat to me, and adjusted himself in his jeans before throwing his own coat over his shoulders. Mischief and guilt mingled in his eyes, an apologetic smile curled one corner of his mouth. One dimple.

“Dinner plans?”

He nodded, proceeding to help me into my coat. “Yeah, I sorta promised Mam we’d be over there for dinner tonight.”

“For what?”

“Ehm, to celebrate?” He looked at me incredulously, as though that should have been obvious. “Everybody is comin’ over. Sean, Ryan, your parents, Kate and her family. We’re pickin’ Meghan up before we head over.”

With my hands planted to my hips, I blinked at him, fighting back my smile. “You didn’t even know if I’d say yes, and you made plans to celebrate?”

He grinned, flashing his dimples. “Oh, please, Kins. You were never gonna say no.”

He laughed, grabbed my hand, and pulled me toward the door, and he continued to laugh all the way to the driveway and into his truck.

Patrickinney.

My Irish bastard.