Page 42 of Monsters, Vows, and Growls
“We need a ring,” Patrick said, laughing into my hair.
“Yeah,” I said, breathless. “And clothes. Maybe start with clothes.”
“Right,” he agreed. “Clothes. Ring. Cake. Officiant. Tiny woodland creatures as flower girls?—”
“No woodland creatures,” I warned, shoving him back into the pillows. "And you better know now. I want a big wedding. I want the whole fairy tale thing."
"You got it." He said, eyes alight with happiness. "How soon do you think we can pull this off?"
Judging by the look on his face, I was pretty sure he wouldn't want to wait the year it normally took to plan a big wedding. Hell, I didn't want to wait a year. I had waited ten years. It was insane. I was insane. I knew it with every beat of my heart, but I also knew that I wanted this. More than I had ever wanted anything before. "How about this fall?"
"That's what?" He scrunched up his face, "Six months, seven?"
"Something like that," I nodded.
"Any chance you'll elope with me to Vegas?"
Grinning, I shook my head.
"I didn't think so. A fall wedding it will be." Then his face lit up even more. "That will give me just enough time to build you that house."
"What house?"
"The one you always dreamed of, the one with the fireplace in the bed and bathroom. The one with the white picket fence and the wrap-around veranda. With a large park, a pond, and a swimming pool. Indoor and out. With the huge kitchen with two islands, two double ovens, and two dishwashers. The one with a living room big enough to hold a ten-foot Christmas tree."
Oh my God, I couldn't believe he remembered all that. "You remembered?"
"I told you. I didn't forget a single thing you ever said," he replied seriously. Taking my hands in his, he continued, "I will make you the happiest woman on Earth, I swear."
I swallowed down a lump in my throat. All this sounded… too good to be true. So much so, I wanted to cry.
"Don't cry," he said, kissing me. He really did know me all too well.
"Can you really do that in seven months?"
"Can you pull off a wedding and open a restaurant?" He challenged.
We grinned at each other and simultaneously said, "I can."
We laughed, and suddenly we were Pats and Ells again. Two teenagers so in love with each other that it gave the world pause.
A month passedby in the blink of an eye. Thirty days, give or take, of waking up to the scent of her shampoo on my pillow, her sleepy groans when the sun hit her face through the windows she still hadn’t let me cover, and the steady, surreal reality that the woman I’d been aching for all these years was now brushing her teeth in my bathroom and stealing my hoodies like it was her constitutional right.
We hadn’t even been trying to rush it. It just…happened.Her lease ended. The new restaurant build got delayed. She brought over a few things fora few nights. Then more things. Then a stand mixer. Then she rearranged the spice rack. And somehow, in that slow, steady accumulation of Ella-sized chaos, my house became our home.
It was different now. Fuller. Louder. Way more flour in the air than any architect’s kitchen should legally allow. I found cinnamon sugar on blueprints, kitchen towels in the laundry room that weren’t mine, and Thorne had officially stopped pretending to be annoyed by her classical music while she cooked.
There were still growing pains. I learned not to mention her time management quirks unless I wanted a twenty-minute dissertation on punctuality. She learned not to touch my truck keys unless she wanted to hear the tragic saga of the first dent I ever got at sixteen.
But the rest?
The rest was easy.
She fit here. With me. Like she always had.
And now she was curled up on the couch, wearing my old university hoodie and nothing else, flipping through my updated house plans with a look I recognized all too well:mischievous architectural sabotage.
“No,” I said, walking in with a fresh mug of coffee.
