“How?”
“Oh, he’ll find a way. As long as he’s sending me checks every month, he’ll find a way.”
I frown, brushing her hair out of her face. “What if he wasn’t sending you checks?”
“Then I’d be broke on the street.”
“No,” I counter. “You’d be safe and warm inside our new house.”
She frowns, and then her eyes widen, and she shakes her head. “No. Greg, you’re not going to take care of me like I’m some helpless child.”
“It would just be for a little while.”
She keeps shaking her head, but I pull her to sit up, gathering her hands in mine.
“Listen, let me take care of things just while you’re in school. When you graduate, I’m happy to split bills right down the middle, if that will make you happy.”
“I don’t want to be a burden.”
“A burden is the last thing I see you as,” I tell her, kissing her knuckles. “If you were serious, then I am, too. Let’s live together. Let’s start over together. Without him.”
Her mouth pulls to the side. “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean… none of the facts have changed. You won’t have kids.”
“That’s okay.”
“I’m going to get old.” She makes a face. “I already am old.”
“No, you’re not,” I say on a laugh. “You’re my person.”
She softens a bit at that, but shakes her head. “I’ll die before you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ll disappoint you.”
“And I’ll do the same.”
She scoffs, as if it’s impossible.
“I will! Trust me, I’m far from perfect. Just wait until you hear me eating cereal.”
She cringes. “Hear you?”
“Exactly.”
That earns me a chuckle.
“Look, none of that stuff matters to me,” I tell her, squishing her cheeks between my hands. I plant a sloppy kiss on her lips before she shoves me away. “You. That’s what matters to me. I want you, Amanda. I want this. I want us.”
She sighs, but a smile spreads on her lips, her hands intertwining with mine between us.
“So, stop being so damn stubborn already and just trust me.”
She debates for a long moment, chewing her bottom lip before she finally huffs and climbs into my lap, threading her arms around my neck. She leans her head against my chest, curling into me.
“Is this a yes?” I ask.
Her eyes find mine, glossed with tears, and she nods. “It’s a yes.”
“Good,” I growl against her neck, and then I take her down in the covers, biting and sucking and tickling her while she writhes underneath me. “Time to seal that deal the good old-fashioned way.”
“I think we’ve sealed the deal in just about every way possible at this point.”
But I shake my head in disagreement, already kissing my way down between her legs.
“Trust me,” I say. “There are many ways we have yet to discover.”
And with Amanda biting her lip and watching me, I show her just one example, using my hands and mouth to unravel her yet again.
In the middle of the night, with her hair splayed across my chest and the soft sound of her even breathing lulling me to sleep, too, I stare up at the ceiling with my mind turning over everything that’s happened between us. I spend half the night wondering if every aching moment in our lives led to this one right here, if this is the reason in that everything happens for a reason cliché.
Maybe it is. Maybe it’s just luck. Maybe the universe just likes to play games with us, the powerless pawns, and I never had any control at all.
All I know is that if it means I get to have her in the end, I’d go through every painful moment again.
I kiss her forehead and let out a long, sated sigh, my chest warm with only one thought that I can’t help but whisper aloud.
“Home sweet home.”
EPILOGUE
AMANDA - FIVE YEARS LATER
“We’re doing it.”
Greg cocks a brow high into his hairline, a finger pointed directly at me like he’s going to spank me if I try to disagree with him again.
I can’t say that I wouldn’t enjoy that punishment, but I heed the warning, nevertheless.
“I’m just saying, I was five years younger when I put this item on our list.” I scan the two massive backpacks we have filled to the brim, the seams stretching, and my heart thuds hard in my chest again at the sight.
“She has a point,” David says, a sleeping Penelope in his arms. “I mean, climbing a mountain at any age is a risk. But, at fifty-two…”
“A young, beautiful, spritely fifty-two,” Greg intervenes, pulling me into his arms and planting a kiss on my cheek. “She’s got this.”
He searches my eyes, holding up one hand between us, his fingers curling into his thumb in our secret sign.
Badass.
“Yeah. I’ve got this,” I tell my son, suddenly defensive about my age when I was just trying to use it as an excuse in the same way he was. But when I see him and Greg exchange knowing looks, I wonder if I didn’t just walk right into a trap they knew my stubborn ass couldn’t resist.
Bastards. Always ganging up on me.
“You still look scared,” Greg assesses, turning me in his arms until I’m facing him. “Tell me your worries. Let me soothe them.”
“Well, if I fall, I might break a hip, for starters.”
“Fixable.”
“It’s going to be freezing.”
“I’ll snuggle you.”
“Ew,” David cuts in, and then he stands, balancing Penelope in his arms as he makes his way through the cabin we rented into the kitchen. “I’m getting out of here before this gets any worse.”
I chuckle, but then my face is sandwiched between Greg’s strong hands, his eyes searching mine. “I mean it,” he promises. “I’ve got you. And you’re strong — plenty strong to climb a little fourteen-thousand-foot mountain.”
I lean into his touch, wondering if he can feel my heart hammering out of my chest, if he knows the true reason why it’s so loud and unsteady.
“You graduated with your bachelor’s and master’s degree after not being in school for thirty years,” he reminds me. “If you can do that? You can do anything.”
I sigh, shaking my head. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he says on a smile, kissing my nose. “And I’m so damn proud of you. Your own practice,” he marvels. “Amanda Young — LMHC.”
Those letters send a flutter of butterflies stampeding through my chest, and Greg wraps me in his arms just as a tornado blows through the front door.
“Grandma, grandma, look!” Tucker screams, running in with his cheeks a rosy pink from the cool Colorado fall weather. “Benji got a squirrel!”
On cue, the black lab Greg and I rescued a year ago bounds through the same door, a dead squirrel hanging limply in his jowls as Julia screams bloody murder and chases him back outside.