EPILOGUE
Cherry
I paced nervously in the living room at the Good Samaritan, walking the ample space over and over again.
Honey and her new friend, Isabella, sat on the floor playing Barbies.
Isabella and Honey had met after I heard about the shelter Caleb had a hand in reopening. Mama and I had decided we were luckier than most, took some homecooked meals to the shelter, and that’s what began what ended up as a career move for my mother.
“Would you relax,” Sage exclaimed, dodging me on his way to the kitchen from Mama’s office.
Mama ran the shelter, and it was thriving, her thrifty ways taking what was donated and making it count.
Sage stopped and turned back. “What do you even have to be nervous for?”
“Caleb’s never late. It worries me.”
Sage rolled his eyes. “You’re so sappy these days. What ever happened to my hard as rock sister?”
Who would have thought that I could be tamed so easily? All my life, I had been certain that I was destined to be an independent, single woman who didn’t have time for a relationship.
I didn’t mind being wrong.
“You wouldn’t get it,” I tossed back and went to the front door, opening it so I could look through the glass of the storm door. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I got it myself. I was so in love with Caleb that I sometimes thought I would wake up and the whole thing would turn out to be a dream. A perfect dream.
An entire year had passed since Caleb found his sister again, and I went pro. Since we professed our love against a wall after the fight.
He’d been acting strange lately. That, combined with the nervous way he’d asked me to the cookout at the shelter, and the way Mama kept looking at me out of the corner of her eye with a barely suppressed grin had my stomach in knots. This cookout was to celebrate the groundbreaking of a second shelter, along with my third win. So why was it making me all sorts of nervous?
Caleb’s car pulled up and my knees went weak. I contemplated sinking onto the couch until I got my bearings, but the next thing I knew, Honey and Isabella were grabbing my hands and pulling me outside.
“Uncle Caleb is here!” they screamed in unison, sounding more excited than they did at Christmas, which I guessed was fair considering how much my boyfriend spoiled them every chance he got.
My stomach dropped as I thought the word. Boyfriend. Even after a year together, it was still strange to use the term boyfriend. In a lot of ways, it seemed too juvenile for my muscled, perfect demi-god of a partner, but in other ways it perfectly suited how I felt about him. He was my friend. My confidant and my advisor.
Without him, I wouldn’t be where I was.
Fighting pro.
Finally convincing Mama it was time to look for a house in a better part of the city.
In love.
It was all more than I could have dreamed of. Which was why I was so worried that suddenly everything could go wrong.
Caleb was already out of the car by the time my foot was off the last step. He instantly came over to us, picking each girl up and swinging her in a circle, then hugging me and placing a kiss on my forehead. He had a strange glint in his eyes, as if he was nervous. Caleb was never nervous. It was so disconcerting that I just stood there, blinking up at him.
“What’s a matter? It’s a beautiful day,” Hunter commented as he passed us, winking, arms loaded with a large box full of food for the cookout we had set up for in the backyard. The girls followed, jumping to try to see what was in the box.
“Yes, it is,” I murmured, wanting to ask questions, but not wanting to disentangle myself from Caleb’s arms or ruin the way his blue eyes gazed down at me, seeming to be lit from within.
“Cherry!” Mama called from inside. “Come help me.”
“Duty calls,” Caleb murmured, letting me go and pressing his hand to the small of my back as we went up the stairs together.
I peeled myself away, narrowing my eyes at the nervous grin he gave me as I went into the kitchen.
“What do you need, Mama?”
My mom stopped halfway to the door with a bowl of coleslaw and frowned. “What is wrong, my fighter? You looked worried.”
“It’s nothing,” I answered quickly. “What do you need me to do?”
“Get the punch bowl down for me and pour that pitcher into it.”
Distracting myself by trying to find the punch bowl in the wealth of cabinets, I was glad to be able to turn my back to my mother. She knew my every expression too well.
“Cherry, I have been your mother for twenty-two years now. Long enough to know when you are not telling me something.”
Dammit. Sometimes there really were downsides to having such a close, supportive family. “I just… I’m worried about Caleb.”
“Worried how? Is he sick?”
“No. I’m more…” I struggled to find the right words. “Worried about us.”
Her cool, wrinkled hand came down over mine as I set the punch bowl on the counter. “Speak your fears, steal their power.”
She was right. I took a deep breath and tried to order my thoughts. “He’s been acting strange lately. I can tell that something is up.”
Her reaction was not what I expected. She stepped away, pulling cartons of juice from the fridge. “I see. And what gives you this worry?”
“Call it a woman’s intuition.”
She nodded and pulled measuring cups from a drawer. “Tell me, you have been with this man for one year. During that whole time, have you seen anything to make you think that he is capable of letting you down?”
I thought about it for several moments. He was many things, occasionally infuriating, often mysterious, but always kind and thoughtful. To this day I still didn’t understand why people in business were scared of him, but I guessed that they didn’t know him like I did.
“I-I suppose he hasn’t done anything to make me think that he would.”
“And what has he done to draw your attention now?”
“Just little things, but they’re so unlike him that I can’t help but notice.”
“Ah, I see. You have always been so observant, but also so willing to gather your defenses early.” She patted my cheek then poured the juice into the punch bowl. “If you have a worry, you should talk about that worry. But now it can wait until after the party. Perhaps Caleb is only planning something. Something wonderful. You should concentrate on the party and not your worrying.”
I cocked my head. “Planning something? Is he? Do you know something?” She had a point and having her simply voice a direction to go in did help me feel much better. But now I could tell she was hiding something too.
“Shoo. Shoo now, and take this punch outside with you,” she said, giving me a swat with a tea towel.
I frowned, but my mood brightened considerably as I carried the bowl out the backdoor and looked out at the gathering.
Hunter stood next to Lillie, who was looking much better than the first time I saw her. She had gained a little weight and looked much healthier, and I suspected love had added some rosiness to her cheeks.
She’d been doing so well after spending over ten months in the California rehab center and was now immersing herself in plans for a second shelter after Caleb purchased the Good Samaritan that he’d installed sprinklers in.
I was so happy for her and Caleb and Hunter that when she followed with cups, I was ready to face whatever happened today with a smile.
My younger siblings had done well setting up the table, and even a few neighbors were trickling over to join the residents of the house. Kyle stood in front of the grill, flipping burgers and discussing sauces with Hawk.
“Sis! Sis!” Honey and Isabella came running past Grace, who was stacking paper plates, and stopped in front of me, holding what might’ve been the prettiest dolls I’d ever seen. “Uncle Caleb got us dolls that look like us!”
I took a closer look and saw that the dolls did indeed share a lot of the features the girls possessed. I looked to Caleb and he just smiled in that slightly nervous way he had earlier. I was pretty sure that he enjoyed giving gifts just as much as Honey and Isabella enjoyed getting them, but something was still wrong.
“How beautiful. Did you tell Caleb thank you?”
“Thank you!” they shouted in unison then dashed off, and as I watched them wrap the dolls in tiny blankets, I pushed my worry away. I knew, especially in Isabella’s case, that too much of their childhood had been spent with worry and making do.
I crossed to Caleb and planted a kiss on his cheek. He pulled me to his side, letting his arm wrap around my waist.
“I think Hunter is flirting with your sister.” I gestured to his friend, who was leaning in closer than necessary to carry on a conversation with Lillie.
“I think he is,” Caleb said with a frown.
“They both look happy.”
I’d known there was something between the two the night Lillie went off to rehab in California, but I hadn’t realized it was as deep as it appeared to be. She’d been home for a month and according to Caleb, he’d barely seen Hunter outside of work because they’d been spending all their free time together.
“I knew he had feelings for her, but she’s way too nice for him,” Caleb grumbled.
I held in a laugh as Caleb’s frown grew deeper when Hunter’s hand gripped Lillie’s arm. In a teasing voice, I said, “Maybe she likes a bad boy.”
Caleb’s eyebrows shot up. “Hmm. She wouldn’t be the first woman I know like that,” Caleb said, equally amused. “But who said Hunter was a bad boy?”
“Refresh my memory. Who dragged you to an illegal fight in an abandoned parking garage?”
“Ah, you have a point.”
“Hey, everybody!” Colby called. “Come get it!”
We watched as the residents of the house got in line to fill their plates.
When everyone had lined up, I pulled on his arm. “C’mon, I’m starving.”
“You know I’d never let that happen.”
“Yeah,” I said with a laugh. “If you had your way, you would package me in Bubble Wrap and have someone feed me at scientifically perfected intervals.”
“That’s actually not a bad idea…”
I joshed his arm before grabbing both of us a paper plate from the table. “Don’t you even think about it.”
He raised his hands solemnly as if he were making an oath. “Consider it gone, dismissed to the void forever.”
“Good.”
We waited in line with my family and neighbors, even Caleb’s father had showed up for the cookout. We all sat on folding chairs or around tables that had been set up. More neighbors and associates of Caleb’s trickled in until we had a real crowd going.
I thought back to when Mama and Sage and I had struggled to support the family without Dad. We never would have been able to afford a meal this extravagant. Now, we could if we wanted. We could afford to throw a party this big after a year of fighting and endorsements, and of course all of Caleb’s doting. We were finally in a much better position than we had been since we lost Dad.
And I owed all of it to the man beside me.
My heart panged at the idea that he wasn’t telling me something, and I found myself studying him uncertainly. Sage was telling him and Caleb’s dad a joke and both of them were laughing, while Honey and Isabella ate at their feet.
Andre must have rolled up sometime while I was inside, because he was sitting on the ground on a blanket with his wife and their adopted baby, letting Clementine exclaim over the toddler’s tiny fingers and toes.
Mama was boasting about Colby’s skills to anyone who would listen while he blushed vibrantly as he helped dish out the burgers.
It was such a warm scene, and for the first time since Dad passed, I felt well and truly whole.
I was so intent on cherishing the moment, burning it into my brain so I never forgot it, that I didn’t notice that Caleb had stood up. It wasn’t until he cleared his throat and asked for everyone’s attention that I snapped out of it.
“Thank you everyone for coming today,” he said, his voice booming and confident. “As some of you may know, this is a celebration of opening the second edition of Good Samaritan Shelter, as well as the return of my sister and Cherry’s three-zero streak. We have so much to celebrate, but it’s also even more than that. This is a celebration of new beginnings.”
Caleb paused and seemed to gather his thoughts, then his eyes landed on me. Something in his gaze made a string of giddiness draw up in my stomach, making it clench.
“Cherry is the most hardworking, deserving woman I know. She has never taken anything given to her for granted, and to be honest, she hasn’t had a hell of a lot given to her but has worked for every portion.”
I blushed at the compliment, wondering what the hell he was doing. Caleb wasn’t the type for overdrawn speeches for no reason, which meant that all of this had to have a point. But what could it be? I looked around at the faces of the others for a clue, and Neddie, the guard from Caleb’s building, winked and grinned.
“This family, the Bowers, are some of the warmest, kindest people that I have ever met. They have welcomed me with open arms and made me a part of a unit that I never thought I would be able to experience.” Caleb dug in his pocket. “So, for that reason and many more, Cherry, I’ve been waiting to give you this.”
Walking slowly to me, his shining blue eyes on mine, he pulled a small black box out of his pocket. I had no idea what to do. The whole world changed to white and tilted. My fingertips went numb as he opened the box and revealed… two sets of keys.
“Miss Cherry Bowers, I have bought a house that’s perfect for us. Would you do me the honor of moving in with me?”
All the air rushed out of my lungs as Mama made a horrified sound. I stood in stunned silence for a second as everyone at the party watched without breathing.
Move in with him?
“After… well, I guess I should ask first.” Before I could say a word, his other hand dipped into his other pocket, and he dropped down on one knee. “Cherry, will you marry me?”
“I—” came out of me as my eyes went to Mama, whose hands were covering her mouth. There was a quick twist of guilt for even thinking about leaving my mama and brothers and sisters.
“Did you really think I would leave them behind?” He pulled out a ring of more keys. “I probably should have mentioned that I also purchased the house next door. It’s a five bedroom, three and a half bath. Plenty of room for all of them, and I’m having a covered walk added to connect the two houses.”
I gasped, tears I’d been holding back spilling over, so shocked that no words would come out.
He stood, wrapping his arms around me and planting a solid kiss on my mouth. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes!” I shrieked as I fell into him.
A cheer rose from those around us, and I blushed furiously. My family rushed in for a hug.
“You knew!” I said as Mama took me into her arms. “You had to know!”
“Of course, my fighter,” she said, eyes twinkling. “Who do you think helped pick out the houses?”
I couldn’t believe it. Set up by my own mother!
But I couldn’t be happier. I didn’t think there had been a more perfect moment in existence.
Even though I’d closed myself off to the thought of ever having a significant other, I had found my forever in the arms of Caleb Birchmeir.
With my family and friends gathered around me and the love we all kept strong, I knew that this was just another beginning.
Perhaps even the best one yet.
THE END
Continue on to read a special sneak peek of my recent release, The Escape.