Page 20 of A Stag Family Christmas

I shift my weight around, pivoting my arm out from behind her shoulders so I can kneel on the floor between her legs. She inhales sharply and meets my eyes. “Emma Cheswick,” I say. “Will you marry me? For real and forever and preferably as soon as you feel comfortable?”

She giggles a bit and nods. “Not good enough, Chezz. I need you to say it. Please?”

“Yes,” she laughs. “I will marry you.” And then I kiss her, softly and deeply, trying to tell her all the words of my heart through my connection with her body. She groans and puts her hands on her stomach. “I guess it’ll have to be soon if I want to wear the dress I got.”

“What are you talking about?”

She stands up from the couch and walks down the hall to our room. I follow her as she starts chattering how Nicole took her to the mall for maternity pants, but Emma got too overwhelmed to buy any and was feeling like a jerk for shutting me out when everyone knew we were going to eventually work it all out and get “actually married.”

“Babe, you’re rambling,” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed. She rolls her eyes at me and opens the closet.

“As we were leaving, I saw this dress.” She pulls out a pale green dress. It’s frothy and layered, with some iridescent bits that catch the light and look like rainbows. “It reminds me of…you know, the sculpture you made.” I smile, remembering my Emma sculpture I’d made after I saw her standing in the sunlight once.

“A goddess,” I say. “Rising from the sea.”

She nods and gestures toward the dress. “I thought maybe I could wear this when we get married.”

I jump up from the bed and grab the ring box. I kneel in front of her again, holding it up. “Ems,” I tell her. “This belonged to my mother.”

She gasps, pulling out the emerald-cut sapphire set sideways in a platinum band. “It’s very important to my family, Emma, and so are you.” I pause to take a breath, overcome by the weight of what I’m asking her. “My brothers both decided they’d very much like for you to have it,” I tell her, “If you’d do me the honor.”

Tears start to creep down her cheeks as she lifts the ring from the box. “Oh, Thatcher,” she says, sliding it on her hand. I had it sized based on another one of her rings when Tim gave it to me the other week, so it fits her perfectly as she stares down at it. She whispers, “I’d be a real Stag.”

“You’re already a real Stag,” I tell her, standing up and pulling her into my chest. “You’ve been a Stag ever since you wouldn’t make out with me at the botanical gardens. You just didn’t know it yet.” I grin at her and she folds herself into my arms. “Come on,” I urge her. “Let’s go eat Christmas food with my brothers and you can show everyone your ring.”

Emma starts peeling off her leggings and shakes her head. She grabs hold of my belt and says, “Before we do that, you need to help me work up an appetite.” And then time stands still for a few hours.

21

TIM

“We’re here,” Ty hollers as he kicks open the front door to my house, startling all the kids into silence for a moment. They’d been wrestling on the rug, making me nervous about knocking down the Christmas tree, so even though I want to be annoyed with Ty, I’m grateful he at least got the rascals to sit still.

“We can see that, Ty,” I tell him, shaking my head as he takes off Juniper’s coat and hangs it on the hook above the radiator.

He practically skips into the living room, though, looking like he’s about to burst with some sort of news. “Out with it,” I tell him. “What have you got for us?”

He plunks down a stack of gifts on the end table and Juniper rubs his arm. “We heard the baby’s heartbeat today,” she says. “And we got my bloodwork back.”

Alice claps her hands. “That’s so exciting! Which bloodwork was this?”

Juniper dances over to Alice. “The bloodwork that tells me this little Stag is a BOY!”

I grin and jump up, clapping my brother on the back and then looking down at the four little boys sprawled on the rug already. Next Christmas will be brutal. There will be at least six kids here. I make a mental note not to let Alice get any glass ornaments for the tree. “Dude, JJ,” Ty bellows. “That’s not even the exciting part.” He touches my arm. “She’s leaving out the exciting part.”

I lift one eyebrow and look at them. Juniper smiles at Ty and nods, and he says, “I’m retiring from hockey. I’m going to be a stay at home dad with this little dude. Isn’t that awesome?”

The room is silent. My grandmother’s jaw drops. My father stands from his seat in the armchair near the fire. All I can think about is the work I went through to secure Ty’s contract when nobody else in the NHL would sign him since he was such a hothead. “You’re quitting hockey?”

He nods. He opens his mouth to start speaking, when the front door flies open again.

Thatcher and Emma burst into the entryway. I grit my teeth. With those two, you never know if they’re going to be screaming or fucking behind my curtains. Based on the look on Emma’s face, they took care of that second part recently. Thatcher dusts some snow out of her hair and kisses her on the cheek. “Were you all standing around waiting for us?” he asks, confused.

I shake my head no. The room is still silent as we wait for Ty to finish what he was going to say, but I notice Emma is dressed to the nines while the rest of us are sitting around in candy cane pajama pants and reindeer sweaters—Gram’s idea of a Stag family holiday uniform. “Good,” Thatcher says, cutting me off before I can talk. “Because we need Juniper to notarize our marriage certificate and then marry us.”

There’s a long moment where nobody says a word, and then Ty starts laughing sort of maniacally. “Good one, Thatch. Heh heh. So anyway, back to me retiring…”

“I’m not kidding,” Thatcher says. He lifts up Emma’s hand, and I see she’s wearing Mom’s ring. “Emma is on board to marry me. And she wants to do it while she can still fit in her amazing fucking dress, because if you hadn’t noticed she’s growing my baby. Our baby.”

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