Chapter 48

Elle

“What will you do while we’re gone?”

Jonah asks this in a tone of utter innocence that both cracks me up and breaks my heart. Kids, I tell you. Not too long from now—four years? five?—everything will be loaded with double meanings as their focus shifts from tag and board games to the hormones destroying their equilibrium, but for right now, Jonah’s polite inquiry means exactly what he says:

What are you and my dad going to do with yourselves while Madden and I are at camp? What do parents do without their children to entertain them and provide them with meaningful caretaking tasks?

Beside me, in the driver’s seat, Sawyer is waging an epic battle against his desire to laugh; I can feel his body shaking. One month after our (earth-moving) makeup, we’re in my car together en route to drop-off for the outdoor adventure camp. The boys’ stuff is jammed into the trunk, and the boys themselves are squirming with excitement and anticipation in the backseat. As we pull up to the drop-off spot—the parking lot outside Katie’s Sporting Goods—I put on my best flight attendant voice and remind them to obey the “fasten seatbelt” sign until the vehicle has come to a complete stop and the driver has turned off the sign.

Needless to say, the instant the car comes to a stop, they are both out of their seatbelts and out the doors, racing toward Brooks. Because what is better in life than a chance to spend five days with Uncle Brooks and a bunch of other pre-teens, enjoying the great outdoors?

The chance to be home alone without any kids around at all.

Just saying.

We follow the boys out of the car, grabbing their stuff from the trunk, and head Brooks’s way to drop it off. We listen to Brooks’s eloquently delivered speech about camper behavior and what will cause campers to get sent home (“Our boys will be fine unless someone’s gender identity gets stepped on,” I whisper to Sawyer), and then we hug and kiss the boys goodbye and head back to the car.

The boys kinda sorta know what’s going on. They know that Sawyer and I made up our “fight” and that we’re back to being friends. I think they might sort of suspect, in an innocent way, that we’re “special friends.” But even though Sawyer and I are pretty sure marriage is in our future (and probably our near future), we also think it’s a good idea to keep things simple for the boys until we make a public commitment. So we’re holding on to both houses, we’re each spending the middle of the night in our own bed…I’m not complaining. It’s been blissful.

But this week? Just the two of us? A whole week of sharing a house and a shower and a bed?

Super. Huge. Special. Treat.

Which is why, as we pull away from our offspring, neither of us is dwelling too much on how this is the boys’ first time away from home, or how much we’ll miss them, or even if they’ll be safe in Brooks’s hands (they will, Sawyer assures me, even if you’d never guess it from a passing acquaintance with Brooks).

“You know what I’m most looking forward to?” Sawyer asks. “Aside from waking you up in the middle of the night by going down on you.”

I make a small desperate noise, and he laughs.

“Drive faster,” I instruct.

But he doesn’t appear to be heading home.

“Where are you—?”

“Patience, grasshopper,” he says.

I give him a hard time (and I do mean hard, regaling him with all the things I could be doing to him if we were at home by ourselves right now) for the duration of the trip, until I realize: we’re headed to Maeve’s.

“Did you know they do a mean brunch?”

“I didn’t,” I say.

He gets us two seats at the new bar. It’s not quite like the old one, but I’m okay with that, because Sawyer is turning the old bar into a big, circular table that’s perfect for family game night.

Maeve’s new decor is, well, just like the old decor, and that’s as it should be.

“Two mimosas,” Sawyer tells the bartender. “And brunch menus, please.”

“Are we…celebrating something?” I ask.

“You never answered my question.”

“What question?”

“ ‘You know what I’m most looking forward to?’ ”

I laugh. “Oh, right. You distracted me before I could answer.”

“I’m looking forward to falling asleep with you in my arms.”

“Ah, me, too. Too bad it’s only four nights.”

“So that’s the thing, Elle.”

He’s fumbling with something in his pocket, and all of a sudden, my hands and feet go cold, and my heart starts pounding—in the best possible way.

The bartender sets the mimosas on the bar in front of us, but we both ignore them. I’m too busy looking into Sawyer’s dark, intense eyes, and he’s looking back, but this time I know what the expression is there, it’s love and trust and devotion, and he opens the little velvet box in his hand and holds it out to me.

“I know it’s fast. But I also know that life is short, and I know how I feel. I want us to be a family. I want the boys to be brothers. And I want to fall asleep with you in my arms, not just for the next four nights, but every night for the rest of our lives. Elle Dunning, will you marry me?”

I look at his beloved face, the eyes that still hold a hint of grief but also so much joy and lust for life, and I don’t have to think about it at all.

“Oh, Sawyer. Yes. Yes, yes, yes!”

He takes the ring from the box and slides it on my finger. Applause breaks out—the bartender is clapping and so are a lot of other people in the restaurant. I feel like clapping myself, but instead I examine the ring on my finger—it’s a solitaire, round diamond. Restrained and eloquent, like Sawyer, I think.

“Kiss me?” I whisper.

“You remember what happened last time?” he murmurs.

As it turns out, neither of us is that hungry. Shame about those mimosas going to waste, though…

Since it’s daylight, we do the rest of Maeve’s patrons, and ourselves, the favor of getting ourselves home before he kisses me.