Page 69 of Silver Lining Love

“Wyatt and Whitney sittin’ in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

I chuckled. She and my sister and their third musketeer, Cara, had taunted all of my brothers mercilessly with that song when we were growing up. Every time the trio saw us eventalkingto a girl, they’d sing it at the top of their lungs.

She sighed and a huge smile spread across her face. “I never thought I’d see the day that Wyatt Briggs brought a girl home to meet the family.”

I didn’t either.

“Well, I never thought I’d see the day that your last name would be Briggs.”

She lifted her brows. “Didn’t you, though?”

“Yeah,” I admitted.

Whitney joined us again, and I rested my hand on her lower back.

“All good?” I asked.

She nodded with a wide smile on her face. “He’s stoked.”

We said our goodbyes and headed to my ’84 Chevy Silverado. It was the first truck I’d ever bought, and I’d left it at my parents’ house when I went to MIT. My dad drove it every once in a while and kept up on the maintenance. I’d been feeling particularly nostalgic since arriving, so I decided to drive it today instead of the rented SUV.

It took us about fifteen minutes to make it the fifty yards to where the truck was parked. That was a hazard of living in a small town. People kept stopping to talk to us. All the conversations were basically the same. There were a lot of remarks regarding “the prodigal son” returning and then a series of questions.

Why had it been so long since I’d been back?

When am I coming home for good?

When was I going to settle down?

They were the same questions I’d been hearing for almost twenty years. But this time, there was something different. This time I had Whitney with me as a buffer. Once I introduced her, the conversation quickly switched to different questions.

How long had we been together?

How did we meet?

When was I going to make an honest woman out of her?

That wasn’t a joke. Several people had asked me that including Barbara-Jean Nelson, who pointed out we were kin now that her granddaughter Sasha had married Beau.

Whitney had frozen beside me the first time the questions were pointed toward her and our relationship, and she’d tried to explain that we were… that’s as far as she got. Being a pro at dodging personal questions, I smoothly answered them all without really answering.

It was strange but people asking about my personal life had always bothered me before, mainly because I had no plans to move back and/or settle down. But things were different now. I wanted to settle down and the thought of moving back here was actually appealing. The kids loved it here and aside from me walking in on Whitney after she’d been crying this afternoon, she seemed a lot happier and relaxed here, too.

But I was getting ahead of myself. First, I needed to tell Whitney how I felt. After my talk with my mom today, I just didn’t want to wait another second longer.

Once we made it to the truck and started driving Whitney seemed to relax again. She turned the radio on, and “Big Big Plans” a Chris Lane song came on. I took it as a sign from above that I was doing the right thing telling her how I felt. The lyrics talked about how Chris’s girlfriend had no idea how much he’d fallen for her and that he had big plans for them, including him wanting to settle down and getting on one knee to ask her to marry him.

As we drove, I couldn’t get over how much the lyrics mirrored our lives. My heart was beating loudly in my chest. I knew that I loved the woman sitting beside me. And not only her, I loved Michael, Alice, and Benji. Seeing the four of them in my hometown, being back here, was eye-opening. Everything that had been missing from my life clicked into place.

They’d had a lot of change over the past year, and I didn’t want to overwhelm or pressure Whitney by telling her that I wanted to marry her and I wanted to legally adopt the kids and all of us move back here. But we weren’t at the “Big Big Plans” stage of our relationship yet. I figured I should start by just telling her how I felt about her.

“Where are we going?” Whitney asked as we drove out of town.

“To a secret spot I found growing up. It overlooks Emerald Cove Lake. I used to go there a lot to get away from all the noise.”

She looked over at me and out of the corner of my eye I could see a smirk on her face. “How many girls have you taken out here?”

“None,” I answered honestly.

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