Chapter 8
Reese
Keeping our engagement a secret was torture, but at least I was fairly confident about what had been going on with Morgan.
Cory and I both agreed we would wait to tell her until Thanksgiving, and he’d assured me that was positively acceptable because she’d known all along that it was coming.
I was going to give her hell once it was out in the open, but in the meantime I was content to let her stew.
November had passed in a flash with Cory upping his game and coming up with new and creative ways to mark me, just like I’d asked him to, and it was finally Thanksgiving.
The house smelled like turkey and sweet potatoes, and I sat on the back patio with a glass of wine and a cheeseboard to graze on while we waited for Morgan and her mystery yellow-tank-top-wearing girlfriend to show up.
Cory’s phone rang, and he answered it on the first ring, laughing as he greeted whoever was on the other line.
“Jesus,” he said instead of a hello “Where are you?”
“At Ford’s,” a voice said.
Cory stood from his chair and came around to join me on the loveseat, his phone held in front of him with Kale’s face filling the screen. The background behind him looked a lot like chaos, a farmhouse kitchen filled with more men than I could count.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Reese,” Kale said to me, stare flickering between me and Cory and back again. “How are things?”
I looked to Cory, who gave me a nod.
I held up my hand in front of my face, showing him the ring.
Kale’s eyes went wide and his jaw slack, and his expression shifted from passive indifference to shock.
“He proposed?”
“He did.”
Kale narrowed his eyes at Cory. “You didn’t even tell me you were thinking about it.”
“Not everything is about you!” someone in the kitchen behind Kale shouted, and Cory’s laugh confirmed his agreement.
“You’ll get an invite to the wedding,” Cory promised, but Kale rolled his eyes.
“You’re the elopement type, and we both know it.”
Kale wasn’t wrong in his assertion. Cory and I had already talked more than once about what kind of wedding we wanted to have, and the words that continually came up for us were: quiet, intimate, peaceful, private.
From inside the house, the doorbell chimed, and I used Cory’s thigh to leverage myself onto my feet.
“That would be Morgan,” I said. “Good talking to you, Kale.”
“Same to you, future Mr. Callahan.”
I snorted a laugh, but secretly didn’t hate the sound of it.
Shoving my left hand into the pocket of my jeans, I headed for the front door. Morgan was there on the porch with a pie in hand and a beautiful—if not nervous looking—woman on her arm.
“Morgan,” I greeted her, taking the pie and stepping out of the way to let her in.
“Reese.” She groaned nervously. “This is Annie. Annie, this is my best friend, Reese.”
“Nice to meet you.”
The two of them followed me into the kitchen, and Annie looked around with as much awe as I had the first time I saw the place. I didn’t want to say I’d gotten used to the modern extravagance of the house, but it was more familiar than it used to be.
“You have a gorgeous home,” Annie said.
“It’s my boyfriend’s.”
Morgan made a sound in the back of her throat, and I set the pie down on the counter.
“Can I get you some wine? Cory’s outside out he phone with some friends, but dinner will be ready soon.”
“Wine is good,” Morgan said, and I got fresh glasses for them, then carried the whole bottle out to top off Cory’s and my drinks.
He was finishing up the call with Kale and the rest of his friends from New York, his expression radiantly amused when he saw the way I kept shoving my hand into my pocket.
He let Morgan introduce him to Annie, and he was so good at casual small talk it took less than twenty minutes before the four of us were laughing together like old friends.
We shared a small meal together, then some more wine on the patio, and the sun had been down for hours when Morgan reached over and grabbed my wrist with a surprising amount of strength.
“What is this?” she asked, twisting my arm at a very unnatural angle until my hand was raised between us, ring right there on my finger.
“A ring,” I said, grinning.
“What kind of ring?”
“The only kind that matters.”
Morgan squealed and shoved her wine into Annie’s hand, and then she was in my lap, face smashed between her hands as she peppered my face with kisses. Before I could bat her off, she was done, crawling over me and onto Cory’s lap to bathe him in the same level of affection.
“Finally!” She threw her head back, then her body so she was sprawled across our laps.
“Finally?” I looked from her pleased smile to Cory’s red face.
“She was with me when I bought it,” Cory explained.
Morgan grabbed my hand and brought it down to her face, studying the ring and spinning it around my finger.
“Has he seen yours yet?” she asked.
My heart skipped. “His?”
I glanced at Cory, who for the first time in almost a year looked sheepish.
“No, Morgan,” he said, giving me a weak smile. “He hasn’t.”
“You have one?” I asked him.
He nodded.
“Why aren’t you wearing it?”
“I don’t know.” Cory shrugged. “I have all these hoodies already, and it feels the same to me. I was thinking about waiting until it was official.”
“And I have this watch already.” I jangled the Rolex around my wrist. “Go get the ring. I want to see it.”
Gingerly, he lifted Morgan’s legs from his lap, and after he headed into the house, I shoved her into his empty spot.
“I can’t believe he had one for himself, and he wasn’t wearing it,” I complained.
I should have been more hurt than I was. I should have thought it to be some kind of oversight that Cory wasn’t as invested in our future as he pretended to be, but I knew him better than that. Ring or not, Cory was it for me and I was it for him.
He returned with a box in his hand that looked just like the one he’d held when he proposed to me.
I stood and met him at the fire pit, taking the box and flipping open the lid.
The band was simple, understated, a perfect match to mine.
Staring down at it, I was at a loss for words, everything tangled in my throat.
“Let’s go inside,” I heard Morgan say, and then it was just Cory and me on the patio, the valley stretching out behind me and my future less than a foot in front of me.
“Are you mad I didn’t tell you I had one too?” he asked.
I shook my head, still fighting for words.
Pulling the band out of the box, I held it gently between my thumb and my forefinger, then I did the only thing that felt right.
In front of Cory, I sank down to my knees.