Page 77 of Stick Move

“He knew you existed. He loved you. Your mother loved you too.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Oh, but I do.” I inch back and find warm, compassionate eyes looking at me.

“Noah?”

“A while ago, I found something when I was in your father’s office. It was tucked away, in the deep recesses of his desk and I was waiting for the right time to give it to you.”

I swallow. “I thought that desk had been cleared out.”

“Something was left behind and when I was in Canada last weekend, I found…” He pauses and takes my hand. “Come on, let me just show you.” He starts toward the back of the house and I stand on the stoop and the back door creaks as he opens it and pulls something off the shelf. He hands it to me and I begin to bawl like a baby when I see it’s a framed picture of my mother and me, shortly before she left. She’s looking at me with love and hope, like I’m the light of her life—like I’m her sunshine. The frame says Mother and Daughter, the words connected with a heart.

“Noah.” I ugly cry into his shirt.

“That’s love on her face, Brighton. She loved you. Her leaving sucked and hurt, and was the worst thing to ever happen to a young girl, but she didn’t leave because she didn’t love you.”

I cling to hope and say, “Maybe…maybe she left because she did love me.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“I bought this place for us Brighton. The farm was your happy place when you were young. I want you happy again.”

“I am happy, Noah.”

“We can come here in the summers and on the weekends. It’s a great place for Mabel to run don’t you think?” My heart nearly overflows with love. “We’ll keep our place at the resort. You’ll want to be close to your work.”

“My work?”

“You need to get back to work at some point. I had no plans to keep you from the manager’s position forever.”

“You’re offering me the manager’s position?”

“The resort is both of ours, you can have whatever position you want. Manager. Events coordinator. Front desk.”

As he starts naming off other positions, I back up an inch. So much has happened since Noah bought the resort, and my priorities have since changed. I shake my head no.

“Brighton?”

“There’s only one position I want and it seems like you’re not offering it to me.” He stares at me for a moment, and then a small smile touches his lips. He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a velvet box and drops to one knee.

“Brighton, I made a mistake when I left last weekend. I’m never leaving you again. I love you. My daughter loves you. I’m not fully alive when I’m not with you. I want you to be my wife.” He opens the box and holds the ring out. “Will you make me the happiest man in the world?”

I stare at the ring, and that’s when I remember the look on his face when he asked me to be his girlfriend and I told him we were already engaged. In response, he told me to keep it a secret.

“The answer is no.”

Hurt moves into his eyes, and air leaves his lungs like he’s been kicked in the gonads one too many times today.

“I’m sorry for everything, Sunshine. I love?—”

“Last time you didn’t even want to tell your friends. Are you even sure this is what you want?”

Without any kind of hesitation, he says, “Sunshine, it’s everything I want. I didn’t want to tell anyone because I didn’t want that to be our engagement story. A rooftop proposal that wasn’t really a proposal at all.” He waves his hand around the lush backyard. “You deserved better. You deserve romance, a setting that included sheep in the background, and a ring that fits. I didn’t want anyone to know until I had a chance to properly ask you and have this resized.” He shows me the smaller ring.

I can barely see it through tears. “You had it resized?”

“Yes, and if you say yes, I want to scream it from the rooftops so everyone knows.”

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