Page 65 of Doctor Grump

The words rang with an unmistakable force that had to be sincere. “Oh my God, Ian.”

“I love you. I fucking love you, Piper. I love everything about you. I love the way you take on the world with a smile, the way you love, and the way you never shut up. I tried not to love you. God knows I tried. But it’s impossible. You are simply too fucking loveable.”

“Ian.” Tears rolled down my cheek. “I love you too.”

“Good,” he said with a nod. “Because I don’t plan on letting you get away anytime soon. And don’t you ever leave me again.”

Right then, he kissed me with a fevered passion bordering on forceful.

I kissed him back, not even hearing the door burst open until the police were right on top of us.

EPILOGUE

IAN

Five months later

It was one of the strangest events I had ever been to.

Piper called it a Christmas fair, but it didn’t look like anything of the sort. A fair, as I knew it, was something held in the middle of town, where civilized people walked around and sampled foods from the stands and generally kept to themselves except when they interacted with vendors.

This whatever-it-was event was a shitfest.

This fair was held next to a forest reserve, with only a few stands to serve the seeming hundreds of people here. Right now, people were milling about, interacting with each other, and going to different stands. Snow fell in soft pellets, building up inches on the floor, but it didn’t stop the jovial atmosphere as kids ran around happily. It all seemed so innocent at a glance, but I knew, at any moment, with not a single warning, it could become a bloodbath.

Heck, it was wilder than a few frat parties I had ever been to. Earlier in the day, there had been a snowball fight that nearly became World War Three. One person had shouted, “Incoming!” and all of a sudden, snowballs were being pelted across the entire field, even at innocent bystanders who had nothing to do with the fight. And no one seemed mad about it. Everyone was laughing and taking it in good stride, even though one person had taken a hard, tightly-packed snowball straight to the eye and had to be rushed to the hospital.

And that wasn’t even mentioning the bobsledding event, where the goal seemed to be to hit other participants with a sled as hard as possible in order to get to the goal.

Just when I thought everything was about to calm down, two parents got into a fight during the apple picking event and had to be separated.

I seemed to be the only person who found all of this behavior strange. The rest of the crew egged the whole thing on, screaming when they almost hit each other.

Santiago must have noticed my look because he smirked.

“You could try to look a little happier, buddy,” Santiago said with a heavy slap against my shoulder pad. “It is a party, after all.”

I glared at him from the corner of my eye but was interrupted by the slap of snow against my face. The snow started earlier in the morning, and according to the weather reports, there might be a storm on the horizon. You would have thought the threat of a snowstorm would have been enough to halt these activities, but apparently not.

“I’m as happy as I can be, considering,” I said. “I’m just finding it difficult to believe that this is how I’m spending my Christmas eve.”

It was all Piper’s idea. Why my heavily pregnant wife wanted to spend her day in the damn cold with a bunch of barbarians, I didn’t know. But she seemed to be having the time of her life.

I watched her, watched the way her face was aglow with happiness as she spectated the fight, and I felt my heart jump in my chest. Nearly five months later, I couldn’t believe we were here together. I couldn’t believe what my life had become. After nearly losing her, I went to the hospital to get patched up. According to her, with the grogginess and high feeling of the drugs, I had proposed to her. She hadn’t taken me seriously until I sobered up the next day and did it for real.

She said no.

“I need it to be more romantic,” she’d said, rolling her eyes. “More pizzazz. Come on. I know you can do better than that. Ask me again the right way.”

So I had. I rented out one of her favorite places, a bird-watching garden in the middle of town, and had it decorated with flowers of her favorite color. Then I had Kendy, who was thrilled with the whole idea, pretend to be lost to bring Piper to the spot. I even contacted some of her friends through Santiago and got them to be there as witnesses for the proposal. It was a lot of work and way more interaction than I wanted, but in the end, it was worth it to see her bawl in happiness when I got down on one knee and popped the question.

Besides, the whole proposal introduced me to her friends, who turned out to be great people in the end.

“I know it seems like a lot,” Faith said, shooting me a sympathetic look while standing next to her husband. “But trust me, it’s all in good fun. No one’s actually getting hurt.”

“I see,” I said seriously with a stoic look on my face. “That must have been fake blood running down that fella’s nose, right? And fake teeth that popped out?”

“Just a little roughhousing,” Monty said, not taking his eyes off the fight, clearly enjoying the spectacle. “Although it’s going to be a bloodbath once old man Cleary joins in. He’s the mean kind.”

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