Page 95 of Barbed Wire Fences
“To celebrate.”
She turns her head to the side, smiling up at me. I take a moment to kiss her lips slowly, savoring the last time she’ll be just my girlfriend.
“To new memories here in Whitewood Creek,” I say as I fill both of our glasses, raising them in the air. “I remember everything, Jael. The simple moments when we’d drive home from school and then spend the evening looking for food for dinner and laughing. How I wanted to protect you more than anything from everyone in your life that hurt you. How it felt when I’d hold you, and you’d sigh with your whole body collapsing into me like you knew I’d carry the weight. You’ve always been the one that got away to me. You ruined me for everybody. No one else could have ever measured up.”
She smiles, leaning back into my arms and turning her head to the side to meet my lips in another kiss and then raises the glass to her lips for a slow sip.
“It was always you for me too, Rhett.”
I tighten my hold on her, feeling my pulse race as I reach for the small velvet box in my pocket.
“Marry me,” I whisper into her ear. I hold open the box, displaying the beautiful emerald diamond ring inside of it. “I feel like I lost a decade without you. I don’t want any more time to pass without you as mine.”
She turns around in shock, tears in her eyes as she looks between mine.
“I’ve always been yours. I think I always thought moving to Whitewood Creek had been the worst thing my parents could have done to me. Leaving behind my friends and life in Charlotte to move to the middle of nowhere right when I was stepping into becoming a teenager. Now I’m seeing, it was the best because it led me to you. I love you. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
I cover her mouth with mine, kissing her hard. When we break apart, she’s smiling at me, a mischievous grin across her pretty face.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask her, pulling her back to my chest.
“Oh, just how this was probably the same part of the lake where you taught me how to give head for the first time.”
I choke on my sip of champagne in shock.
“You’re naughty.”
She laughs lightly. “You’ve rubbed off on me.”
Then she slips off the bench to her knees and moves between my legs before tugging the blanket away from my lap.
“If we’re having a full circle moment, I think it’s only fitting…” she starts as she reaches for the button on my jeans, undoing it then dragging the zipper down and pulling my pants along withmy boxers off before wrapping her hot mouth around my tip and sucking.
“Only if you insist, Mrs. Miller.”
Chapter 33 – Epilogue Jael
Two Months Later...
“If you don’t get your sticky paws off my cherry pie, I’m going to scream,” my friend Rae Marshall says, her brows shooting so high they practically disappear into her hairline as she glares at her husband, Cash Marshall.
Cash just grins, the kind of shit-eating smirk that tells you this is their love language.
“That’s not what you said last night. If I remember correctly, you were begging me to stuff your pie with my—”
“Cash!” Rae shrieks, cutting him off, though she’s smiling and rolling her eyes like she’s long since given up winning this battle.
Cash’s grin only spreads. He turns to me with a wink. “Nice to see you again, Jael.” He pulls me in for a quick squeeze.
“Good to see you too. Is there somewhere I should set this down?” I lift the dessert I brought for Regan andHayes’s early Thanksgiving-slash-Community Friendsgiving at Mayberry Manor.
The place is alive tonight. Kids from the Whitewood Creek Community Center dart around the expansive yard. Marshall babies are passed from lap to lap, siblings and partners fill every corner of the front porch and grass, and locals make themselves comfortable on folding chairs with plates full of food. It feels like the whole town is here.
Rae swoops in and rescues the cupcakes from my arms, cooing at the tiny buttercream turkeys that I designed on top. “These are adorable.”
Before I can answer, Rhett slides in beside me, his arm heavy across my shoulders, pressing a kiss to my hairline.
“Rae would know,” he teases. “She’s the official fall mascot of Whitewood Creek.”
