Chapter Twelve #3
“I was charming,” he protests, crossing to us.
He drops a quick kiss on the top of my head—a simple gesture that sends my pulse spinning.
He mentioned that he’s going to be affectionate, and now meeting his family, I realize why he has to be.
It would be unusual if we didn’t touch. “It wasn’t anything fancy.
Katerina flew into Seattle to visit, and I picked her up from the airport.
And the second I saw her, I just… knew.”
Hillary’s eyes immediately well up. “Knew what?” she whispers.
“That I wanted to marry her,” he says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. He looks down at me, and there’s something in his gaze that tells me he’s not making it up. In a way… he isn’t. “So I said, ‘Guess we’re getting married.’”
“That can’t be it,” Hillary says, unhappy with her son’s lack of finesse in the proposal. “You didn’t even kneel? No speech? No ring hidden in a pastry? Scottie James, I raised you better than that.”
“I thought it was romantic,” I hear myself say.
They both turn to look at me.
“You did?” Hillary asks, surprise and delight mixing in her voice.
“Yes,” I say, forcing myself not to look away from him. “It was very… him. Honest. Direct. No games. He knew what he wanted, and it was me. Some men spend years dragging their feet, but Scottie didn't want to lose me because of an expired visa. What’s more romantic than that?”
His smile softens in a way I haven’t seen yet. A new Scottie smile unlocked. Like I’ve peeled back a layer, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with that.
“See?” he says, eyes still locked on mine. “She gets me, and that’s why I didn’t want to wait another day to marry her.”
Hillary tsks, but she’s smiling. “Well, at least let me see the ring again so I can forgive you.” She extends her hand.
I offer her mine. She sucks in a breath.
“Oh my God. Scottie, this is gorgeous. You did very well.”
“I had help,” he says.
“From who?” I ask. I never did get around to asking about how the ring came about.
“Luka,” he tells me. “He helped me pick it out after I saw you in that dress at the bridal salon.”
“You bought that ring after you saw me,” I say quietly, Scottie’s eyes on me as if he’s trying to tell me something about the moment he saw me for the first time in my wedding dress.
“You saw her before the vows?” his mother practically gasps.
I glance over at her. “Your son is very impatient.”
Hillary nods, satisfied. “At least he has excellent taste. In jewelry and in wives.”
Scottie chuckles. “Yeah. But I knew it was the right one the second I saw it.”
For a beat too long, our eyes hold.
I can’t help wondering if he’s still talking about the ring…or if I’m the thing he knew was right, the moment he saw me.
By late afternoon, the backyard looks like a small festival.
Picnic tables covered in checkered cloths stretch across the lawn, plate after plate of food—barbecue, salads, casseroles, things labeled “Jell-O salad” that defy both Jell-O and salad.
Children tear across the grass in packs, screaming, chasing, and having so much fun.
Adults cluster in loose circles with plastic cups and easy laughter.
Scottie keeps one hand on my lower back as he steers me from group to group, the touch light but constant, like he’s drawing an invisible line that says, She’s with me.
“This is my Aunt Sue, Uncle Mike, cousin Jordan,” he says.
“The one getting married?” I ask, trying to keep up.
“Different Jordan,” he says. “That’s Jordan with a ‘y.’ This is Jordan with an ‘a-n.’”
I blink. “There are two Jordans?”
“Three,” he corrects. “But Jordan with an ‘i’ couldn’t make it.”
“Your family is chaos,” I chuckle
He grins. “Welcome to the Eastons.”
Later, after we make our rounds and get food, I stand back closer against the house with a paper plate in my hand, just… watching the party laid out in front of me while he keeps moving through friends and family all wanting a moment with him. The hometown celebrity who makes time to hug everyone.
He moves through this world as if it were built for him, but I guess it is. He stoops down to hug an aunt, clapping an uncle on the shoulder, letting a toddler climb his leg like a tree. When someone calls his name, he turns his whole body, paying full attention to whoever he’s talking to.
Everyone here loves him. It’s so obvious that it almost makes me wish this were another thing from this fake marriage I could keep. Even if all I got was to watch him like this—happy, smiling, making everyone laugh with a joke he tells. He’s so good at putting people at ease.
They light up when he gets close. They tease him mercilessly but with deep affection, pride woven through every joke. He’s the one they brag about, the one they worry about, the one they cheer for even when the TV is off.
He’s the golden boy.
But there’s no arrogance in it. No entitlement in his heart or ego. Just genuine regard returned for every ounce of love that’s poured into him.
My family gatherings were rigid, choreographed events.
Long tables with real crystal and wait staff.
The conversation sounded more like a strategy meeting than dinner.
Everyone looking to have a tactical advantage over the other.
Everything was about leverage and power and how things looked from the outside.
Really… it was always about survival for the family name, not for the members that lived inside of it.
No one chased fireflies.
No one yelled across a yard just to share a story.
No one hugged you just because you were there.
It’s nearly ten when the party finally starts to wind down. Kids get gathered, wrapped in blankets, and deposited into cars. The grill goes quiet and cold. The embers in the firepit where one of Scottie’s uncles played the guitar all night are starting to burn out and turn to mere smoke.
I’m on the front porch, staring out at the stars overhead, bright and closer than I’ve ever seen them, just the way Scottie promised they would be. Then he finds me.
“Are you ready to head out?” he asks, stepping up beside me.
“Your mother offered to let us stay here,” I say.
“I know,” he says, smiling. “And I love her, but you don’t throw someone into the Easton household overnight unless you’re trying to break them. I figured you’d want space to breathe.”
“They’re wonderful,” I say honestly.
“Yeah,” he says, looking out over the yard with me. “They are.”
We say our goodbyes in the foyer, Hillary gets another long hug out of me, Arny squeezes my hand and tells me he’s “never seen his boy this settled,” and about six different relatives press food containers into my hands.
We’re walking back to the truck when he stops. “Shit, I almost forgot.” I turn just in time to see him run back and hug his mom, who steps out into the yard to wave goodbye.
Then I see him sneak something out of his back pocket.
A piece of folded paper? Or is it a check he folded in half?
He sneaks it into her hand as she pulls back from the hug, so that his father can’t see.
I see the slight shake of her head, but he nods yes and then pulls her back in, whispering something in her ear, her arms coming back up around his neck, and she nods against his shoulder.
Then he turns and heads back toward me.
“I love you,” he calls out to her.
“I love you too.” I hear the crack in her voice, the way she wipes her nose like he made her cry.
But not tears of sadness, hearing of her son telling her something she needed to hear.
Knowing him, he probably told her that everything is going to be okay, that they’re in this together. Because that’s who Scottie is.
Then he opens my door for me, and before I know it, we’re back in the truck, heading toward the lake and the small boutique lodge he told me about.
“You okay?” he asks after a few minutes of quiet.
“Yes,” I say. “Why?”
“You’ve gone quiet,” he says. “Quieter than usual.”
“I’m usually quiet?” I ask.
He shrugs, one corner of his mouth lifting. “Yeah. Like you’re trying to solve something in your head, and you don’t like any of the answers.”
He’s not wrong.
Tonight showed me a life I thought only lived in American sitcoms and Hollywood movies. A family that loves loudly. A mother-in-law who calls me “sweetheart” and hands me recipes. A father-in-law who jokes about the grandkids he assumes we’ll give him.
A man who fits in the middle of all of it and still somehow finds space to send money home for his dad’s treatment and hold my hand when I’m scared.
What would it be like… to have this for real?
To be loved like this? By someone like him? And a family like that?
The thought is too big to say out loud, so I go quiet because I know Scottie well enough to know that he carries too much of other people’s burdens, and he’s already carrying enough of mine.
The last thing he needs to spend his time thinking about is giving me any more.
Our burden of disparagement on this agreement is already heavily weighted on my side.
I’d feel too greedy to ask for more.
“Just tired,” I say finally. “That was a check you gave your mom, wasn’t it?”
His eyes stay on the road, but she already told me that Scottie sends them money. I don’t technically need confirmation, but I want it.
“She didn’t cash the one I sent last week. So I wrote her a new one and doubled it,” he says. “She’s being too proud.”
“They need the money,” I say simply.
He nods. “Matchmaking pays the bills, but barely. They give back to their community. They love on everyone they can and would give the shirt off their back. My pops volunteers to sell tickets at the football games, he’s the auctioneer for the kids 4H programs, my parents are part of the welcome wagon and they make meals every week for Meals on Wheels to help the elderly,” he says, “Half the people there weren’t really aunts, uncles, and cousins.
They’re people without families that my parents have brought in over the years and given them a place to belong when they didn’t have one before. ”
“People like me… without a family,” I say, realizing that I haven’t felt like I’ve had a place to belong since my mother passed.
“You have a family KitKat,” he says, reaching over and wrapping his fingers around mine. “You have me. Even if someday I’m your ex-husband. That title still has the word husband in it. We’ll always be family from here on out. Don’t forget that,” he says.
The urge to climb into his lap and kiss him with everything I have burns deep in my belly, but then we'd crash, so I just nod.
He glances over at me again, like he knows I still have something on my mind but won’t share. “We’re almost there. You’ll like the hotel,” he says, trying to change the subject.
He’s right. The lodge is beautiful. Between the stone and warm wood, soft lighting, and the faint smell of smoke from a massive fireplace in the lobby, it’s exactly what I thought we’d stay in when he said Montana.
Our room is on the top floor, with a king bed, a small sitting area, a fireplace, and a balcony that opens onto a view of the lake and the dark silhouettes of mountains beyond.
“Wow,” I breathe, walking out onto the balcony as he drops our bags by the closet.
“Not bad, right?” he says. “If we’re going to pretend it’s a honeymoon, we might as well get the honeymoon package.”
“Right… pretend,” I echo but only loud enough for me and the sky and stars to hear.
We’re pretending, and I need to remember that, even when my body is very aware there’s only one bed in this room.
I might already be falling.
And I don’t know how to stop.