50. Happily ever after starts here
50
HAPPILY EVER AFTER STARTS HERE
HAZEL
The driver pulled into my driveway, and I blew out a sigh of relief. It had been good to be back in New York. But after three days of publishing meetings, interviews, and networking, I was ready to come home.
Zoey and I had parted ways last night. She was staying behind for an extra day to rub our success in the faces of her old colleagues and undo whatever damage her cousin had done this month to her apartment. But I was more than happy to be home. Heart House gleamed like a beacon of welcome before me.
It took me a full beat to realize there were no construction vehicles parked on the street. No dumpster in the driveway. But there were baskets of ferns and mums hanging jauntily from my front porch rafters. Exactly the kind I had wanted.
“What the hell?” I murmured to myself.
The driver pulled up to the garage, which, if my eyes weren’t playing tricks, looked cleaner and pinker than when I’d left. The doors had lost their peeling dingy paint and now gleamed white. But the biggest surprise was the fact that the deck and ramp were finished.
I hastily tipped the driver and took possession of my bags before dialing Cam. But there was no answer. We’d exchanged a few texts since he’d climbed through my library window smelling like fish, and he’d promised to celebrate my new publishing contract with me as soon as he officially won me back.
On a whim, I called his sister.
“Yo,” Laura answered.
“Hey, do you want to come over and be my first guest to try out my ramp? I don’t think I have any food in the house, but we could order something.”
“Got it covered. I’ll be there in forty-seven seconds,” she said.
“That sounds like Levi might have to arrest you for speeding.”
“Levi’s out of town with the rest of them. I was just in the neighborhood,” she said before disconnecting the call.
True to her word, she rolled into the driveway less than a minute later.
“Grab the wine out of the back, would ya?” she called to me.
“When did they get all this done?” I asked, pulling the general store tote from the back seat as she reassembled her chair on the ground.
“Let’s just say Cam was highly motivated to finish.”
A ball of worry lodged itself in my digestive system. Was he highly motivated to finish because he was over us? Because he’d reconsidered and decided we were better off mortal enemies? At this point, it was our only relationship option because there was no way I was going to be his friend. I wasn’t mature enough for that.
“They started the ramp at the store, and we’ll be closed all next week so they can redo the register layout and the bathroom,” Laura said, transferring neatly to her chair.
She had a laughing crying emoji Band-Aid on her forehead from her fall, but she sounded excited, almost cheerful.
“Does this mean you’re going back to work?”
Laura’s grin put the sun to shame. “Finally! I took a page out of your book and filled an entire notebook with plans and product ideas. Next year is going to be big for us. All of us. I can feel it,” she said.
“That’s great.” I wanted to be part of all of us. Desperately. “Come on, let’s see how far they got inside.”
I went up the ramp ahead of Laura and onto the deck.
“I didn’t order furniture,” I said, eyeing the teak dining table and chairs, the cushioned swivel chairs circling a low table. There were more flowers in pots. Mums of every color. The manly grill gleamed in the corner.
“Must have been the patio furniture fairies,” she mused innocently.
I opened the back door and held it for her.
“How is your brother?” I asked as I followed her across the low threshold.
“Which one?” she teased. “By the way, you can put that on the counter.”
I blinked and dropped the tote unceremoniously on the floor. I had counters. And tile. And a pantry door. And a glassed-in breakfast nook.
“Holy… It’s done!”
“Surprise,” she said, spinning in a celebratory circle.
The cabinets were a stately navy with gold hardware. The counters—there were so many of them—gleamed a classy white with gray veining that complemented the textured backsplash.
“I had twelve inches of counter space in my apartment,” I said, folding over the island and stretching my arms out to either side. There were barstools at the island—six of them with rustic white legs and bowed driftwood seats.
“Yeah, you’re definitely going to have to learn to cook.” Laura produced two wineglasses from the cabinet next to the beverage fridge. “Mom already scheduled you for a meatloaf lesson next week.”
“But how…”
The glass-front cabinets held a rainbow of dishes for entertaining. I snapped a picture of them and fired it off to my mother. I’d been making an effort there and was pleasantly surprised by the results.
“The boys pulled a couple of all-nighters and called in reinforcements.”
“Where are they? Why aren’t they gloating about how good this place looks?” It looked like a kitchen from a magazine. The perfect kitchen in the perfect house, and I was the one who got to live here.
“They had something to take care of. They should be back soon,” she promised and began laying out assorted cheeses, crackers, and meats on the table in the breakfast nook.
I clamped my hand over my heart as I surveyed the space. “This is too much.”
If this was Cam’s grand gesture, I was going to pounce on the man and rip his pants off the second he showed his face.
“So how was New York?” Laura asked, pouring a glass of wine and shoving it at me.
I took it with me to the pantry door. “It was…great. Zoey got me a new deal with a new publisher—oh my God. This is bigger than my entire kitchen in Manhattan,” I squealed. “Wait. Why is Cam’s air fryer in here? Did he donate it to me? And where did this hand mixer come from?”
“Pantry fairies maybe?”
I backed out of the pantry and pointed at her. “What do you know? What’s going on?”
She shrugged innocently just as the doorbell rang. “Might want to get that.”
I took my wine and half jogged the length of the hall. “Oh my gosh, look at the curtains!” I exclaimed as I went.
I yanked open the front door, expecting to see a smug Cam. Instead I was met with Darius’s high-beam grin.
“Hazel, my favorite lady who’s not my mother! You remember Sylvia from Silver Haven, right?”
I blinked. “Yes! Of course. I owe you so many apologies. I’m sorry about endangering your residents on that pontoon boat.”
“No apologies necessary,” Sylvia insisted.
“Can we come in?” Darius asked.
I felt dizzy in the kind of delirious merry-go-round way. “Uh, sure. It looks like my house is done. Laura’s in the kitchen with cheese and wine.”
“You had me at cheese,” Sylvia said.
I led the way.
“Hey, Mr. Mayor. Nice to see you again, Syl.”
“You too, Laura.”
They were all grinning at each other like they were in on some kind of joke and I was on the outside.
“Does someone want to tell me what’s going on?” I said.
“Well, Sylvia and I wanted you to be the first to know that the old hospital property finally sold.”
“Oh, God. Did Dominion buy it? For its golf course scheme?”
“Actually, Silver Haven snapped it up on my recommendation. Story Lake is going to be the home of our newest assisted living facility,” Sylvia announced.
I blinked several times.
“But we tricked you into coming here. We made you think we were a thriving small town with an active population and then almost drowned half your residents in the lake. I mean, I take full responsibility. We were just trying to show everyone what we could be, but it was a catastrophic failure?—”
“I know. I read your newsletter,” Sylvia said with a soft smile. “Hazel, what you showed me was that Story Lake goes above and beyond to make everyone feel welcome. Beyond all of the accessibility modifications the whole town had already done for Laura here, you and your town made my residents feel like they belonged here.”
“That’s how Story Lake made me feel too,” I admitted.
“I’m not just in administration. I’m the vice president of land acquisitions, and I was on the phone with my bosses before the bus even left the parking lot. You’re a vibrant small town that has already made so many great strides in accessibility. The hospital grounds are a perfect fit for one of our tiered care centers. It was a no-brainer.”
“But the sewage treatment problem,” I said.
“Turns out the county commissioners were railroaded by Nina into moving up the deadline. Twenty other counties in the state have to make the same upgrades, and they were given five years to do it,” Darius explained.
“I don’t know what to say,” I said, looking through damp eyes at the three beautiful people saying beautiful things in my beautiful new kitchen.
“We’d love for you to consider dropping in and teaching a monthly writing class to residents,” Sylvia continued. “Laura has already volunteered to be our local accessibility consultant. And Darius said he might have an in for us with a local contractor for the fifteen independent living cottages we’ll be building.”
I felt like my heart was trying to somersault its way through my throat.
My front door burst open to a chorus of drunken “Hazel!”
“Would you excuse me for just a minute?” I said, backing toward the doorway.
“Oh, I’m not missing this.” Laura wheeled after me.
“Wait, is the bar stocked?” I came to a skidding halt outside the dining room door.
“Focus, Haze,” Laura said, poking me in the back.
“Right. Focusing.”
“Where did that chair come from?” I asked no one on my way past the parlor door.
I found them in a tangle just inside the door. “Hazy Wazy!” Zoey screeched, waving her arms at me as Gage wrestled her jacket off her. The second she was free, she threw herself at me.
“Hi,” Levi said with a goofy grin.
“Councilwoman Hart, we have a pick to bone with you,” Gage slurred.
Zoey smashed her face to mine and delivered a noisy, alcohol-scented kiss to my cheek.
“You guys smell like a brewery and a distillery and a winery had a ménage à trois,” I noted.
But I wasn’t looking at any of them. I was looking at Cam, who stood in the middle of them. The sober eye of a drunken hurricane.
He wasn’t smiling, and he had a crate under each arm.
“Trouble, I’m begging you. Please put some food in them before I end up digging graves in the backyard,” he pleaded. “They’ve been like this since we left New York.”
“Why were you all in the city? What’s going on?” I asked.
“We’re celebraling!” Zoey said, shooting her arms up in the air.
“Yay!” Gage said.
Levi waved tipsily and smiled.
A yip echoed from the crate under Cam’s left arm. A little wet nose and one brown eye peered out at me.
“Please tell me that’s not another raccoon,” I whispered.
“I wanna tell her,” Zoey insisted.
“No, Cam should tell her,” Gage said, leaning in to look Zoey in the eye. He put his forehead against hers and closed one eye. “It’s important that he gets all the credit.”
Zoey pouted. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But we helped.”
“We were the best helpers,” Levi said, poking himself in the cheek with his finger. “I can’t feel my face. Is that normal?”
“Larry, get them out of here,” Cam said, sounding like he was five seconds away from throwing punches.
“On it, Cammie. Come on, kiddos. Who wants some grown-up Lunchables and some more alcohol?” she said.
“Meeeeee!” The drunken band of friends and family followed her toward the kitchen.
“But I wanted to see her face when he tells her about Jim the Dim,” Zoey complained.
I closed my eyes. “What did you do to Jim the Dim?”
“Let’s go talk in your office,” he suggested.
I gripped my wine and followed him, wondering exactly how deep a shallow grave had to be.
There were new curtains in here too. Thick velvet ones. The glass doors only managed to shut out some of the chaos, but Cam had my full attention.
“Okay. Here we go,” he said, setting the crates down inside the door. He took my hands. “Hazel Hart.”
“Yes?” I squeaked.
“I fucked up.”
“I’m aware of that. Unless you did some new fucking up in the last three days.”
“I’m going to fuck up again,” he pressed on. “Probably a lot. Bishops aren’t known for talking about anything. So you’re gonna have to be patient, but just know I’m trying.”
“Okay. Should we let whatever’s in the crates out?”
“Not yet. First, I need you to know that I love you.”
“Aww!”
I looked past Cam to see Zoey, Gage, and Levi smushed up against the glass doors.
“Guys, give them some privacy,” Laura said sternly.
“You do?” I asked, returning my attention to Cam.
“So much it scares the hell out of me.”
“So much you want to run away?”
He shook his head. “Never again. Besides, you love me too,” he said arrogantly.
“Oh, I do, do I?”
“I’m ninety percent sure, and I’m confident I’ll earn the last ten by the end of this grand gesture.”
“You finished my house. That’s a pretty grand grand gesture.”
“I want a life with you. I want a home with you. I want to fill that life and that home with the people and things we both love.”
“Like monster grills?”
“Like perfectly reasonable grills and annoying relatives and more books and pets, maybe kids.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. Well, I don’t want to be the only one freaking out here.”
“Mission accomplished,” I said, pressing a hand to my nervous intestines.
“But nothing I have to offer could ever take the place of what you’d already lost,” Cam said.
An annoyed meow came from the other crate, and I thought I spotted a flash of whiskers.
“What did I lose?” I asked.
In answer, Cam marched over to the last moving box I’d stashed in the corner. He pulled out the books. My books that now belonged to Jim.
“These,” he said. “They can go on the shelf now.”
“Wait. What are you saying?”
“She’s not getting it. Should we do some charades?” Gage wondered loudly from the hallway.
“Oooh! I love charades. Okay, act out, ‘We got your books back!’” Zoey shouted jubilantly.
My heart didn’t trip. It didn’t somersault or skip a beat. It stopped.
“You got my books back?”
“Wow, she’s a really good guesser,” Levi said.
“She’s like supersmart,” Zoey informed him.
Cam nodded. “We did. Jim no longer owns any of your IP. He signed the rights back today.”
“Oh my God, is he dead? Did you beat him to death with his own arms? Are you going to prison? They’re just books, Cam. I’ll write more of them. Lots more.”
“I didn’t beat him with his own arms, and I’m not going to prison. It was legal.”
“We intimidated him legally,” Gage shouted through the door.
“Mostly,” Levi added.
“Zoey called a meeting with Jim and his boss,” Cam told me. “We showed up with six of your mother’s favorite lawyers. And once the bloviating windbag shut his gaping piehole, we laid out how damaging to the agency’s reputation it would be if all the clients knew they employed agents who legally assumed the rights to authors’ intellectual property.”
“There was a lot more yelling and legalese thrown around first,” Gage said.
“Guys, can you just not?” Laura said on a muffled groan.
“You blackmailed him?”
“It was almost as satisfying as punching him,” Cam said.
I looked down at his hands. He had a barf emoji bandage over one knuckle. “Is this an old punching injury or a new one?”
Cam’s grin was wicked. “Let’s just say Jimbo thought he could get a piece of his manhood back by swinging first. He was wrong.”
I didn’t have words. I could barely see straight. Hot tears were blurring everything.
“Hazel, I want you to have everything you want.” His voice was like honey poured over gravel. “I wanna be the one who champions you, who inspires you, who protects you. I wanna be the one at your side for all the bad news and the good.”
I couldn’t hold back any longer. I ran to him, collided with him, wrapped my arms around him.
He did the same, those strong arms anchoring me to him even as he lifted me off my feet.
“I love you,” I said, kissing every square inch of his face.
“Guys, I think she’s happy,” Levi hissed.
“Either that or she’s eating his face. Did anyone make sure she had lunch today?” Zoey asked.
Cam kissed me, and I stopped hearing the drunken commentary, the suspicious animal noises, the doubts. “Love you too, Trouble. We’re gettin’ married.”
I choked out something between a cough and a laugh. “We’re what?”
He set me on my feet and reached into the waistband of his jeans. “Here. So we can start planning.” It was a save-the-date wedding organizer notebook.
“Hang on a second. Shouldn’t there be like a ring or, I don’t know, a proposal first?” I asked, flipping the notebook open. There, taped to the first page, was a girthy diamond engagement ring above Cam’s hasty scrawl. “Say yes.”
I stared up at him, open-mouthed.
“Say it, Trouble. Put me out of my misery.”
“Yes.”
We kissed again, long and hard, to the soundtrack of our friends and family celebrating. My office doors burst open, and we were pulled apart and hugged to within inches of our lives.
“Wait! What’s in the crates?” I demanded as Gage spun me around in a drunken circle.
“You didn’t show her the cuties?” Zoey slapped Cam in the chest.
He shrugged. “They were my backup plan if she tried to say no.”
“For Pete’s sake,” Laura said, leaning over and unlatching the door to the first crate.
A pudgy orange cat meandered out, then flopped his considerable girth onto the floor and began an intense grooming process. The second one, an adorable one-eyed puppy of indeterminate heritage, required a bit more coaxing. But after a handful of treats, he was soon zooming around my office.
“It was just supposed to be the cat, but according to Mom, they’re a bonded pair and I’d be a monster to split them up,” Cam said.
“What about Bertha?” I asked. Did raccoons tolerate cats and dogs like they did baby piglets?
“Bertha has been relocated to the fanciest luxury raccoon house money can buy in the backyard. There’s literally no other way for her to get in the house unless someone gives her a set of keys,” Cam promised.
“You’re crazy.” I laughed, turning to admire my ring in the light from the window. My laugh turned to a gasp when I realized there had been one more addition to the room.
My rickety table had been replaced by a stunning curved wooden desk. Its rich gold stain gleamed in the afternoon light. Under the lip of the top was a carved piece of trim that read Happily Ever After Starts Here .
“Cam,” I whispered.
“You like it?” he asked.
I nodded, not trusting my voice for almost a full minute. “I love it. I love you.”
“Thank God,” he said, reeling me in for another embrace, another smoldering kiss. “Because I already moved all my stuff in.”
“Enough of the sexytimes. Mom and Dad are here. Celebratory drinks on the deck,” Laura called from the hallway.
“More sexytimes as soon as we get rid of them,” Cam promised.
“A lifetime of sexytimes,” I agreed.
That evening, after celebratory drinks, sexytime, and a thorough exploration of the steam shower, Cam and I ventured out onto our new deck. Meetcute the puppy and DeWalt the cat—named after Cam’s favorite brand of tools—stretched out at our feet. My limbs felt loose and heavy. My head felt light. And the ring on my finger felt like a steadying anchor holding me in the moment.
A shadow passed over the string lights in the twilight. Goose the eagle soared by and tipped his wings in a birdlike salute.
“I’m going to have to step up my game,” I whispered from under Cam’s arm.
“What game?” he asked, rubbing his lips over my hair.
“My fictional happily ever after game. You out–grand gestured every hero I’ve ever written.”
“Damn right I did. Get used to it.”