“Te…” His voice shakes and cracks before he clears his throat and squeezes his eyes shut tightly. When he opens them up again, he stares straight into my eyes, “Tess. My pretty girl. I don’t remember a time when you weren’t in my life, but I remember a time when I considered you only a friend. I also remember a time when I sat in those gym bleachers back at Liberty High and noticed you for the beautiful woman you had become. We were just kids. Are just kids. But I fell in love with you then. I fell in love with the idea of us.”
“Tess, my pretty girl, I fell in love with you so many years ago. It seems there hasn’t been a day on this earth that I haven’t had you a part of my world. We started so young. I had the pleasure of considering you a friend, then one day my eyes, thank goodness, were opened. You walked into the gym that day, and my heart no longer was mine. It was forever yours.”
“There’s nothing I won’t do for you. I will lay down my life for you. I want to give you all that I have. I want to give you the good. I want us to go through the bad together. I want us to stand by each other for all of our lives, building our lives together.”
“I love you more than anyone else on this earth. That might sound terrible considering that we have four examples of our love, but it’s true. I’d do anything for you. So many years ago I told you I’d lay my life down for you, and it’s still true. I asked you once to walk with me through the good, through the bad, building a life together.”
“Tess, I want you to build a life with me from the ground up. Will you do that? Will you let me show you what love is, that love is more than just a feeling? It’s showing you that I’ll serve you, give to you, that I will prove to you what it is to be loved your entire life. Will you let me continue to choose you above all others for the rest of our lives? Will you allow me to give you my name for you to carry for the rest of our lives? Will you do me the honor of becoming Tess Josephine Ryan, for as long as we both shall live? Marry me?”
“I want to be given the honor to continue to walk alongside you for the rest of our lives. I used to think that I was given the choice to love you. But it’s not the case. I was given the choice to protect you, to show you that you mean more to me than anyone else. My heart doesn’t know any other way but to love you. When I asked you to marry me I asked you to build a life together from the ground up. We did that. But I wanna do it again. We’re building our lives together again because it was friggin’ fun as hell the first time around, and I can’t wait to do it again with you. Marry me? Again?” His smile is so bright, but his voice is slightly shaky, like he’s fighting back his own emotions.
My gaze has been solely fixed on his eyes that I didn’t even notice the round-cut, floating diamond eternity band that he has slid onto my ring finger. The same finger he’s placed a ring on two other times in our life: the first time when he proposed to me in this very same spot and the second time during our wedding. I’m full on crying, have been since he dropped to his knee, the ugly hiccup sort of sounds coming out of me, tears streaming down my face, and I have to keep sniffing up (completely unattractively, I might add) the snot trying to make its way out of my nose.
“Of course I’ll marry you all over again. Any day of the week,” I manage to squeak out.
“Man I love you. So damn much.”
“I love you, too. A whole lot.” I smile at him.
Suddenly he stands, bringing me with him. His large hands are cradled around my face, and his mouth is covering my own. His lips both soft and bruising at the same time. His hands travel down my sides until they’re settled on my waist. He circles his arms around my body and pulls me in close as he dips over us just slightly. My arms are wrapped around his neck, my back arched.
The passion I still feel for this man is overwhelming at times. I look at him and can’t fathom how I was blessed in the way I am. How was I given the opportunity to love and protect and cherish this human standing in front of me, holding me in his arms as if I’m the most precious of gifts? We stumbled and fell, and we’ll probably do it again, because that’s life. Life isn’t easy. It isn’t gentle or perfect. Sometimes life is full of beauty, and sometimes life is full of ugly. But that’s what makes it so much fun, stumbling and falling and brushing our dirty selves off and getting back up again to fight through it.
I feel us walking and shuffling through the fallen leaves, crunchy underneath our feet. Or his, rather, since he’s since picked me up, and my legs are wrapped around his waist. His strength has never failed, nor waned, over time. Our mouths are still connected, kissing each other in feverish movements, not willing to part even for a moment. Before we dated each other, I had kissed a few other boys, and he had kissed a few other girls, but our bodies… our bodies have only fully connected with one another’s.
We reach the pickup, and we both start laughing into each other’s mouths as Barrett tries to get the tailgate down. After a bit of bumbling, neither of us admitting it’s because we’re a few decades older than when we first did this, he manages to get it unlatched and lays the gate down before turning and placing me on it. The moment my butt hits the frosty cold tailgate I yelp and jump at the contact.
“Maybe this flashback portion of my first proposal will have to be put on the side burner until it’s warmer out,” he says, eyes twinkling and a beautiful broad smile stretched across his face.
I’m sitting on the lowered tailgate, my butt an icicle, and the tears start once again. From start to finish, he’s managed to recreate the moment when he asked me to take his name. His words were different, but the actions were the same. He asked me once to give him my entire heart for the rest of my life, but what he didn’t realize then and still doesn’t realize is that it was never mine to give. I never had my heart in the first place — he had it the moment it first beat, and every thump, every skip, it’s all been for him.
“I love you. A whole lot doesn’t even cover it.”
“I love you, too, my beautiful emotional girl,” he says, wiping away the tears again, and places a firm kiss to my lips. “Let’s get you home. I’m sure Grady is back to the house from his date by now, and I know the kids are dying to know how this all played out.”
After climbing back into the pickup, me sliding over right next to him again, this time without him asking, he drives us home. A home we’ve built together, just like he asked and promised so many years ago. We’re barely through the door when we’re assaulted by not three, but all four of our kids. Cole couldn’t stand being away, knowing what was happening between his parents and Grady tonight. Harper, of course, loves having him home and shows us where he signed her cast right away.
We spend the next half hour telling the kids and James the entire story, the boys in the house all giving Barrett grief at appropriate times for being corny. Maggie, being Mags, gets a little emotional as well as sighing with happiness. Harper is her typical oblivious self, completely unaware of most everything happening around her. Grady tells us about his date, how the restaurant was killer and Bri looked so gorgeous, and it wasn’t awkward at all, even when she fumbled and spilled Cherry Coke all over the table from her nervousness. He is one smitten kitten and finally able to show it.