His Second Chance (Love Comes To Town)

She laughs. “I still remember your writing the answers to the final exam on that fat eraser.”

I grin. “It got me to pass.”

I pause, look around. One side of the building is crowded with taxis. The other isn’t.

The other it is.

We walk along in silence as I carry her that way.

“Emerson?” she says quietly.

“Yeah?”

“When did you know?”

“Know what?”

“You know.”

I pause. “Does it matter?”

“Emerson.”

I shrug. “The minute I saw you in the crowd while on tour. I had thought about it before, but then, I knew.”

“But we hadn’t even traveled together or spent that much time...”

“It didn’t matter. I just knew.”

She moves against my chest, and I see tears sheening those beautiful blue eyes. “You’re crazy.”

I smile down at her. “You like it.”

“Well, I’m crazy too, now aren’t I?”

“Not going to argue with that.”

And we laugh and laugh, and it occurs to me then that I’ve walked us around to a shady little garden where there’s no one around. It isn’t perfect—there’s weeds and a pile of mud further on that might just be dog shit. Not exactly the dream spot for a proposal.

I could keep walking, keep looking for the perfect place. But here’s the thing—the perfect place is where Wynona is.

And so, I put her down carefully.

“Emerson,” she says.

I get down on one knee. “Wynona.”

“God, are you actually...”

“Well, will you?”

She manages to clamp down her grin into a frown. “Will I what?”

“You know.”

She glares at me. “Seriously?”

“All right,” I growl. “Wynona Collins, will you marry me?”

She eyes me appraisingly, and I sigh.

“When I met you all those years ago,” I continue, “I went home and made that song, our song. I pretended to make it up when you were there a few months later.

“Every girl I dated after you, I kept comparing, and they always came up short.

“You left a dirty sock at my place, this funny pink thing with smiley clouds on it. I’ve still got it, wedged in the back of some drawer.

“When I was drunk, my go-to used to be Googling you, sometimes going to your tattoo business page.

“I don’t like how much I love you.” I frown. “It’s inconvenient. When we fight, it ruins my day. Do you ever wonder when it’s almost too good to be true...”

“How it can last?” she asks quietly with a nod. “Yeah. Like it’s so wonderfully, horribly good, it’s bound to mess up. Somehow.”

“But it hasn’t,” I say.

“It hasn’t,” she says, eyeing me with a look I can’t place. “So, all that you said before, basically... you’re a stalker?”

I chuckle. “Right, I forgot the shrine I have to you in my closet where I sacrifice baby spiders.”

She giggles. “So.”

I glare at her. “You going to make me say it again?”

“No.”

“Then...”

“I’m just thinking.”

“Of?”

She tips her head. “Whether I want to say ‘yes, oh, God, yes!’ or if that’s a bit overdone.”

“Why not just nod?”

She giggles. “Seriously?”

“Have you ever seen a movie couple do that? Or read a book where they do it?”

“It would be a first,” she admits, her smile growing.

And then, blue eyes steady on me, slowly, she nods.

I rise, nodding too.

She nods back. “Weirdo.”

I nod again. “Goof.”

And then we kiss, still laughing.

Right now would be when they shoot the fireworks.

Epilogue

Wynona

“He really pulled it off,” Sierra says, eyeing our gorgeous hilly surroundings with an approving smile.

We’re sitting at a table on a hill, surrounded by a sweeping, green-grassed swath of other hills, beneath a deep blue sky. The air is the perfect compromise between hot and cool, fresh. It smells like life, with the slightest tinge of the sea.

“Scotland,” Josie says with an awe in the name that isn’t entirely undeserved, as the past few days we’ve spent here can attest. “Are you guys still going to check out Fingal’s Cave?”

“If a weirdly geometric cave is good enough for Pink Floyd, it’s good enough for us,” I say. “But first, the honeymoon.”

Josie snorts. “Hasn’t your whole relationship been a honeymoon?”

“Kind of,” I admit.

“And he still won’t tell you what it is?” Josie presses.

I shrug. “Nope. After I told him I don’t want any more trips, he said he’d have to think it over.”

“Isn’t that the definition of a honeymoon, though, a trip?” Sierra asks, twirling a brown-red strand around her finger.

“Wait, I’ve got this,” Josie says, taking out her phone. “According to Oxford Languages, a honeymoon is a vacation spent together by a newly married couple.”

“And vacation?” Sierra asks.

“An extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home or in traveling,” Josie says.

“Well, that leaves options,” I say with a chuckle. “I guess?”

Josie just laughs. “Typical Wynona. Ask for something impossible.”

My gaze strays to Emerson, where he’s chatting with his brothers and Jeremy, glancing at me. We share a smile. “And I got it.”

“That you did,” Josie says, leaning in. “So, tell me, what is happily ever after like?”