Extended Epilogue
Emily
I leaned back in my seat, letting the late afternoon sun warm my face while the crowd buzzed around us. Alice was tucked into the seat beside me, her feet swinging above the ground.
“Hey, you’ve got a spot.” I grabbed a napkin and wiped the mustard from her chin. She scrunched her nose but let me do it. Audrey sat on Cam’s other side, a little notebook balanced on her knee.
“Emily, should I write down how many pitches, or just the strikes?” She held up her pencil, ready to record my answer.
“Both, if you can keep up. Pitches in one column, strikes in another.”
She nodded seriously and drew a line down the middle of the page.
This. This right here was everything.
It was hard to imagine this weekend getting any better than this. So many feelings had cascaded through me when my name had been announced last night. Emily McIntyre - North Carolina Emerging Artist.
Jesus, I still couldn’t believe it.
Then there were my parents, trying to worm their way back into my life. Honestly, the satisfaction I’d felt when I’d pretended not to know her was vicious.
I’d shut that door and walked away. And instead of crumbling, I’d spent the rest of the night surrounded by people who actually loved me. Funny how that worked.
Speaking of people who loved me… I let my gaze drift to Cam. He was watching the field, but his knee was bouncing and he was drumming his fingers against his thigh in an uneven rhythm.
I frowned. “You okay?”
He startled slightly. “What? Yeah. Fine.”
“You seem tense.”
“Nah, I’m good.” He gave me a reassuring smile and squeezed my knee. “It’s just this game. We’re only up by two.”
“They’re changing pitchers,” Audrey announced from his other side. “So it should get better now. Right, Emily?”
“Yeah, that’s right Auds. So your dad can totally stop stressing now.”
He gave me another smile and draped his arm over the back of my seat, running his finger tips up and down my arm.
“Emily.” Alice tugged at my sleeve. “Emily, do you think they have ice cream here?”
“I’m sure they do.”
“Can I have some?”
“Maybe in a bit.”
“But what if they run out?”
“They won’t run out.”
“But what if they DO?”
I bit back a smile. “Then we’ll find you something else equally delicious. I promise.”
She considered this, her little face scrunched in thought. “Okay. But I’m going to be very sad if they run out.”
“Noted.”
Cam checked his phone. Then his watch. Then his phone again.
That had me frowning again. “Are you expecting a call or something?”
“No.” He shoved the phone back in his pocket. “Just... no. Everything’s fine.”
Audrey looked up from her notebook, exchanged a glance with Alice, then went back to her scorekeeping with suspicious intensity.
Weird. But okay.
The innings rolled by. The Knights were now up by four, the crowd was happy, and Alice had graduated from ice cream concerns to giving me a very detailed account of a dream involving a purple dinosaur and a swimming pool full of jelly beans.
“And I could only pick ONE jelly bean, Emily. One. And I didn’t know which one to choose because what if I picked wrong and the dinosaur got mad at me?”
“That does sound stressful.”
“It was VERY stressful.” She threw her hands up for emphasis. “I woke up before I could even pick one.”
“A cliffhanger. The worst kind of dream.”
“I KNOW.”
I was about to ask what flavor she would have picked if she’d had more time when I noticed the crowd noise shifting.
It happened gradually at first. The cheering faded. Conversations dropped to murmurs, then to whispers, then to something that felt almost like held breath.
I looked around, confused. People were turning in their seats, craning their necks, their gazes all drifting upward toward the jumbotron.
My stomach did a strange little flip. I followed their eyes.
And there I was.
My own face, twenty feet tall, Alice beside me, mid-gesture, still telling me her dinosaur story.
Below the image, in massive white letters against a red background:
EMILY, WILL YOU MARRY ME?
The world tilted.
Sound rushed out of my ears like water draining from a tub. My heart stopped, then slammed back to life so hard I could feel it in my throat.
I turned to Cam.
He was already standing, his eyes fixed on my face. And that look. God, that look. Nervous and hopeful and so full of love it nearly knocked me sideways.
“Cam.” His name came out as a whisper.
He reached for my hands. His fingers were trembling. This man, this solid, steady, unshakeable man, was trembling as he pulled me gently to my feet.
The stadium had gone completely silent. Forty thousand people holding their breath.
Cam sank down onto one knee.
My hands flew to my mouth. The tears came instantly, hot and fast, blurring my vision.
“Emily.” His voice was raspy. A little shaky. But it carried in the hush, clear as a bell. “A year ago, you needed some grumpy bastard to help you change a tire. That one moment turned my whole world upside down.”
A wet laugh bubbled out of me.
“You climbed a tree to rescue a cat that didn’t need rescuing.” He smiled, and his eyes were bright. “You taught my girls how to paint and how to keep score and how to love this stupid game as much as you do.”
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Could only stand there, tears streaming, heart pounding, completely and utterly undone.
“You walked into our lives,” he said softly, “and you fit. Like you’d always been there. Like we’d just been waiting for you to find us. You took a broken family and filled the cracks with gold.”
His thumbs traced circles on the backs of my hands. Grounding me. Keeping me tethered to the earth when I felt like I might float away.
I was shaking now. Full-body trembling that I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried.
“I love every single part of you, Em. The bright parts and the broken parts and everything in between. And I want to spend the rest of my life making sure you know that. Every single day.”
Movement flickered in my peripheral vision. Audrey and Alice were standing up, holding a small box between them like it was the Holy Grail.
They held it out to Cam, their eyes shining. Alice was practically vibrating. Audrey had tears on her cheeks.
“Good job, monsters,” Cam said softly. “You did so good keeping our secret.”
Alice beamed. Audrey sniffled and nodded.
He took the box from them. His hands were steadier now. Sure.
He opened it.
A diamond caught the late afternoon light, sending tiny rainbows scattering across his fingers. Simple. Elegant. Perfect.
“Marry me, Emily.” His voice was quiet now. Just for me. “Be my wife. Be a mom to my girls. Be my family, officially, forever.”
The word was out before I even knew I was speaking.
“Yes.”
It came out broken. Barely a sound. I tried again, louder this time.
“Yes.”
And again, because I needed him to hear it, needed the whole damn stadium to hear it.
“Yes. A thousand times yes.”
Cam’s face split into the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. His hands were steady as he slid the ring onto my finger. The diamond winked up at me, so beautiful it took my breath away.
Then he was on his feet, his arms around me, his mouth finding mine in a kiss that tasted like tears and joy and forever.
The stadium erupted.
The sound crashed over us like a wave. Cheering, clapping, stamping feet, whistles, the whole place shaking with the force of forty thousand people celebrating. But it felt distant. Muffled. Like it was happening in another world.
This world was just us. Just his lips against mine, his hands cradling my face, his heart pounding against mine.
When we finally broke apart, we were both crying.
“I love you,” he said, his forehead pressed to mine. “So much, Em.”
“I love you too.” I kissed him again, because I could. Because he was mine. “I love you too.”
Two small bodies slammed into us.
“She said yes!” Alice shrieked, throwing her arms around both of us at once. “She said YES!”
Audrey was crying too, not even trying to hide it. “We knew you would. We knew it the whole time.”
“You knew?” I laughed, pulling her into the hug. “You little sneaks. You kept this secret?”
“It was SO HARD,” Alice said. “I almost told you like a hundred times.”
“I had to keep kicking her under the table at breakfast,” Audrey added.
Cam scooped them both up, one in each arm, and pulled me into the circle. We stood there, the four of us tangled together, laughing and crying and holding on like we’d never let go.
The crowd was still going wild around us. The jumbotron was probably still showing our tear-streaked faces to the entire stadium. I didn’t care. Let them watch.
I looked down at the ring on my finger. Looked at Cam’s face, so open and full of love. Looked at these two little girls who had wormed their way into my heart and made a permanent home there.
This was my family.
This was my life.
Cam pressed a kiss to my temple, his arms still wrapped around all three of us.
“You okay?” he murmured.
I thought about everything that had led to this moment. The fear and the doubt and the years of believing I was too broken to be loved. The scars I’d hidden. The walls I’d built.
And then this man, with his quiet patience and steady hands, who had seen every broken piece and loved me anyway. Who had never, not once, given me a reason to doubt.
“I’m perfect,” I said. And for the first time in my life, I meant it.
Alice tugged on my sleeve. “Emily?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Does this mean we can have cake? Because Daddy said if you said yes, we could have cake.”
I burst out laughing, the sound bright and wet and so full of joy it almost hurt.
“Yeah.” I pulled her closer, pressing a kiss to her messy hair. “This definitely means we can have cake.”
Cam caught my eye over her head, his smile soft and private and just for me.
Forever, that smile said.
Forever, I smiled back.
I couldn’t wait to get started.