Epilogue #2
This little debate had been playing out in my head for a few weeks now.
We’d only been together since October of last year.
Was six months too soon to want to be with someone for the rest of one’s life?
Beckett’s siblings had known they’d found their soulmates after a short time of being in a relationship, but from what I’d gathered from being here in the States, that generally wasn’t how it happened.
But I knew I didn’t want to be with anyone else. Beckett was it for me.
We arrived back at Hartley’s Nest and pulled into our driveway. Beckett helped me unpack from my trip and we had some lunch. BLTs. My favorite.
I’d expected some reunion sex. That was what we called it when we made love after we’d been apart. Though I hated to be away from Beckett, I loved everything about reunion sex. Beckett was unusually quiet though. Had he tapped into my thoughts about getting married?
And if he had, had that spooked him?
We got ready for Orla and Fionn’s welcome party, picked up my friends at Hank’s cabin, and enjoyed a night of revelry with the good people of Greenridge.
Beckett and I ate and danced and interacted with everyone, but something still felt off.
I tried to convince myself that I was being silly.
That I was just tired from traveling or that I was readjusting to life in Vermont after spending time in Verdalach.
But that wasn’t quite it.
After the party ended and Orla and Fionn had been taken back to the cabin, Beckett and I readied for bed.
Normally, reunion sex would be next. We always spent my first night back from a Verdalach trip wrapped up in each other in the best possible way.
When I came into the bedroom from the bathroom, however, Beckett was in bed and lying on his side, facing away from me.
“Is everything okay?” I asked him as I stood by my side of the bed.
Slowly, Beckett rolled to his back, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. “Yeah. I’m just sleepy.”
I was disappointed, but he was allowed to be tired. Reunion sex could happen tomorrow I supposed. I slipped into bed, but when I reclined, the mattress felt odd on my back. I wiggled to the left a little then to the right, but a lump in the mattress poked into me.
“What happened to this mattress while I was away?” I asked.
“Happened?” Beckett asked, turning to face me. “What do you mean?”
I threw off the covers, got out of bed, and flicked on the bedroom light. A huge bump in the mattress stared up at us. “That.” I pointed to the hump. “What is that?”
Beckett ran his hand over the hill, a slight grin playing on his lips now. “Hmm. I don’t know, Princess. You’d better check that pea out.”
Amelia had me read a story called The Princess and the Pea to her a few months ago—and pretty much any time Beckett and I babysat her.
“I like this story better the way you read it, Sadie,” she’d said. The way you read it meant in my slight Verdalachian accent. The tale was a silly one about a princess who proved she was a princess by being able to detect a tiny pea under a stack of mattresses.
But this mountain in the mattress now was much too large to be a pea.
I lowered to my knees, almost distracted by Beckett’s bare chest as he rose to sit up in bed, but my curiosity was slightly stronger.
Slightly.
I plunged my hand between the mattress and boxspring, my fingers closing around a box. I dragged it out, immediately deflating the swell in the mattress.
Climbing back onto the now level bed, I held up the wooden box. It was about the size of a shoebox, stained a lovely rich brown that highlighted the wood’s grain, and engraved with a heart made of leaves on the top.
“This is lovely.” I ran my fingertip along the carving.
“Darius made the box,” Beckett said. “Open it.”
I obliged and the sparkle of a diamond ring sitting in green velvet pulled a gasp from me.
The diamond was surrounded by emeralds as green as both Verdalach and Vermont in the summertime.
The band was an antiqued silver that made the ring look as if it had been forged in ancient times.
It was the most superb piece of jewelry I’d ever seen, more special than any royal jewels.
Beckett plucked it from the box and shifted so we were knee to knee on the bed.
“I hope this ring is fit for a princess and that you’ll agree to be my princess for the rest of your life, Sadie.
I’m not royal, but I promise to love you with all that I have in me.
Now and forever.” He held up the ring. “Will you marry me, Princess?”
I launched myself at Beckett, both of us flopping onto the bed, our mouths fusing at once. Then I stopped kissing him and swatted his chest.
“I thought you were mad at me or something when you didn’t want to have—”
“Reunion sex?” He shook his head. “I thought we’d try engagement sex instead.” He held the ring up again. “But you have to say yes first.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” I poked my finger into the ring and another round of kissing ignited.
Followed by engagement sex.
Which, for the record, was better than reunion sex.
I’d started my life as Princess Aislinn Síomóin in Verdalach. I’d become Sadie Rodgers in Vermont. My next adventure would be as Sadie Hartley in this big, beautiful family at Hartley’s Nest with Beckett by my side.
Where I was certain we’d all live . . . happily ever after.
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