My palms were sweating, but I managed a laugh. “Gee, thanks for reminding me that there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Always here for you,” she said, clapping her hands down on my shoulders once more before she pointed at me and started jogging backward toward the tables. “You’ve got this.”
She turned, taking off in a slow jog as I forced as steady of a breath as I could manage. Then, I looked down at the football in my hands, and I pulled a small, navy blue, velvet box out of my pocket, fastening it to the ball with the sports tape Paige and I had tested a hundred times.
When it was safely in place, I looked up, finding Paige waiting in her designated spot behind her mom. Everyone was in conversation, still, and oblivious to what we were doing.
At least, until I took a breath and launched the ball, and Paige cried out, “Heads up, Mom!”
Sydney looked up just in time to notice the ball spiraling toward her, and her hands went up instinctively, catching it before it hit her chest. She screamed, though, and then laughed, looking back at Paige before her eyes found me and she pointed. “That was on purpose, you jerk!” She laughed again. “You’re lucky I caught that!”
“What exactly did you catch?” Paige baited behind her, and Sydney looked back, confused, before her eyes fell to the ball in her hands.
And the little box strapped to the side of it.
I jogged over with my heart still pounding in my ears, and everyone fell silent, Sydney’s eyes widening as she fingered the box out of the tape hold and held it between two fingers. She looked at it, looked at me, looked at it again, looked at me.
I swallowed, rounding the table until I was next to her chair, and lowering down onto one, shaky knee.
“Sydney Clark,” I said, taking the box from her trembling fingers and holding it in my own.
Her eyes found mine, wide with surprise, her lips slightly parted as she waited for me to continue. From somewhere behind her I heard Ruby Grace whisper, “I can’t believe Betty is missing this.”
“All my life, I watched my dad and mom love each other, and I wondered if I’d ever find someone to share my life with the way they had,” I said, and I heard my mom sniff from where she watched us at her end of the table. But my focus was on Sydney, and I grabbed her hand in mine, squeezing gently. “I decided at a pretty young age that I wouldn’t, that it was rare and, in most ways, impossible. And I settled into a life alone, content to just be a brother, a son, and a football coach.”
“A damn good one, too,” Eli said, and a soft chuckle found the tables.
“And I was happy,” I said. “I was. I didn’t think anything was missing.” I leveled my gaze with hers. “Not until you walked into my life, and my heart realized long before my brain did that I could never go back to life without you — not once I knew what it was like with you in it.”
She smiled, her eyes glossing over with a sheen of tears.
“I know I’m not perfect,” I started. “I know we will have mountains to climb. But if I’ve learned anything from the ones we’ve already overcome together, it’s that there isn’t one high enough to defeat us — and that there’s no one I want to be standing with at the top more than you.”
I fumbled, clumsily opening the box in my hand until the modest ring I’d bought her caught the sunlight. She gasped at the sight, covering her mouth as her eyes flooded even more.
“Sydney, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to be a father to Paige, and a husband to you. I want to help you in the garden and watch you do yoga on the porch.”
“Gross,” Paige chimed in.
I laughed, and Sydney did, too, freeing two parallel tears down each cheek.
“I want to come home to you, every night, and I want to wake up to you every morning. I want to dream together, and accomplish together, and fight together, and love together. And I want to grow old with you, with the family we’ve built, with a love story only we could write.”
Sydney was already nodding when I pulled the ring from its place in the box, lining it up with her ring finger on her left hand.
“Will you take me as the scarred, damaged, football-crazed man that I am and trust me to love you, to protect you, and to care for you, until our days on this Earth are done and we pass into our next life?” I asked, and I slipped the ring onto her finger, because I already knew the answer. “Sydney, will you marry me?”