Chapter 31
thirty-one
. . .
Archer
Winnie snuck back to her bedroom an hour ago, and we were going to talk to Melody this morning. It was time.
Things had shifted between Winnie and me, and we couldn’t be sneaking around forever.
I wasn’t sure what it meant, or where it was going, but I knew it was special and I knew we were both feeling it.
It both excited and terrified me.
This was not something I’d planned for, or expected, but I was going with it.
“Good morning, Daddy,” Melody said as she came into my bedroom a little earlier than usual.
“Morning, angel face. How’d you sleep?”
“I slept great. I’m excited about Uncle Bridger posing to Emilia.”
I chuckled. “Yes. I’m excited for him to propose, too.”
“I like weddings, Daddy,” she said. She hopped up on my bed as her wild brown hair fell all around her face.
“Yeah? I think they’re great, too.” I sat up and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Are you prosing to my Winnie?” she asked, as if it was no big deal.
“What? No. I’m not proposing to Winnie. But I did want to talk to you about Winnie.”
“Okay.”
Well, now she had me fumbling over my own thoughts. I thought Winnie and me being together was going to be a big discussion, but she thought I was proposing, so this was not going the way I’d expected.
“I, er, I like Winnie,” I said.
“I like my Winnie, too.”
“I guess I’m saying that I like Winnie more than a friend.” I tucked her hair behind her ears as I looked at her.
“But you don’t want to marry Winnie?”
“Well, we aren’t talking about marriage.” I cleared my throat. “I’m saying that right now, I’d like to date Winnie.”
“Oh. I thought you and my Winnie were dating.”
“You did?”
“What does ‘dating’ mean, Daddy?”
“It means that you want to spend time with someone. That you want to be with them all the time.”
Her brows cinched together. “You spend lots of time with Winnie, right?”
“I guess I do.” I sighed. I clearly sucked at this.
“Hello? Are you guys up?” Winnie called out from the kitchen.
Thank goodness. She’d be better at this than I was.
“Yep. Come on back. We’re just talking about you.”
“You’re talking about me, huh?” Winnie said as she walked in dressed in a pair of gray joggers and a matching sweater. Her hair was in a ponytail, her face free of makeup. She was stunning.
I patted the bed. “Yep. Come on in.”
“Daddy’s telling me that he likes you, but he doesn’t want to marry you.” Melody frowned, and my eyes bulged out of my head.
“No. No. No. That’s not what I said.” I cleared my throat. “I said that I liked you, and Melody asked if I was proposing. And I said no, obviously, but that I’d like to date you. And she doesn’t understand what I’m saying.”
Winnie didn’t appear offended in the slightest. She just chuckled and turned to face Melody. “Tell me what you are confused about.”
“Uncle Bridger is prosing to Emilia, but Daddy said he isn’t prosing to you. He wants to spend time with you. But I don’t know why he’s telling me that, ’cause he spends time with you every day.” Melody shrugged, giving me this goofy look like I had three heads.
“That does sound very confusing,” Winnie said with a smile, and she ran her fingers over Melody’s cheek.
“So Daddy and I have been friends for a while now, but we realized our feelings are deeper than friendship. We told each other last night that we both have these deeper feelings for one another, and we thought we could start dating, and make it official.”
A wide grin spread across Melody’s face. “Daddy wants you to be his girlfriend?”
Didn’t I say something similar, and I got no reaction?
“Yes. I’d like that,” I said, fighting the urge to roll my eyes that nothing I said made sense to my daughter, while everything Winnie said was golden.
“Right. And it just means that we’ll continue spending lots of time together, and we won’t date anyone else.” Winnie smiled.
“But he’s not prosing to you?” she asked again.
Since when did she want me to get married so badly?
“No, sweetie. When people decide to date, they spend time together before they do all of that. So we just want to enjoy being together right now. It’s a really good thing. And it makes us both happy, but we want to make sure it makes you happy, too.”
“I love my daddy, and I love my Winnie, so it makes me very happy that you want to spend time together.”
“That’s so great, sweet pea. Because we want you to be happy always.”
“And Winnie is going to stay in the house sometimes,” I said as they both turned to look at me.
“Daddy is so silly today.” Melody laughed as she looked at me with that strange look again. “Winnie already lives here, Daddy. Did you forget that?”
Winnie covered her smile with her hand.
I sighed. “I’m clearly not good at this.”
“What he meant is that maybe I won’t be staying in the casita all the time. I’d stay in the house with you guys, so I might be here in the morning when you wake up.”
“Oh, you won’t have your own room anymore ’cause you and Daddy want to share a room ’cause you have the deep feels?”
“Yes, that’s right. Would that be okay with you?”
“Yes. I like you being closer to my room, too,” Melody said before pushing up on her knees and gasping. “Does this mean we’ll be a real family? Justine says I don’t have a real family because I don’t have a real mama. But now I can tell her I do have a real family.”
My hands fisted at my side. “Justine is a—”
Winnie’s hand moved to my thigh. “Justine is a confused little girl. You’ve always had a real family. It doesn’t take a certain number of parents to make a family. But now, both of our families are growing because we’re all going to be together. Does that make sense?”
“But can I tell Justine that you’re my family now?”
“There’s a lot I’d like to tell Justine,” I grumped as I glanced at Winnie, who was giving me that look that meant I should bite my tongue.
“However, none of it is her business, really. But you’re welcome to tell her whatever you want about our family.
We don’t have secrets. Winnie and I are dating, and if that’s something you want to share with your friends, I would never ask you not to talk about it. ”
“I like Winnie being in our family, Daddy.” My daughter smiled up at me.
I pulled her onto my lap. “I like it, too, angel face. I love you very much, you know that, right?”
“I know that, Daddy.” She giggled. “You tell me every day. Lots of times, too.”
Winnie sniffed, and I looked up to see her swiping the tear moving down her cheek away.
This had gone well.
At least once she’d come in and helped explain things.
“Okay, who wants to hit the Honey Biscuit Café for pancakes.”
“I do!” Melody kissed my cheek, then kissed Winnie’s cheek and jumped off the bed. “Will you help me get dressed, Winnie?”
“Of course I will.”
Melody ran out of the room, and Winnie moved to her feet. I grabbed her hand. “Will you help me get dressed, Winnie?” My voice was gruff.
She smiled. “That’ll have to wait for later. But we’ve got plenty of time tonight for that.”
She gave me a chaste kiss and walked out of the room.
She was right. We had plenty of time.
I hadn’t planned on any of this.
But that was not going to stop me from enjoying it.
Bridger was proposing to Emilia today, and we were all on cloud nine about it. They adored one another, and it was nice to see my grumpy cousin find his happily ever after.
The girls had taken Emilia out shopping, and then Bridger had asked her to meet him for dinner at Rosewood’s, while we finished setting up the backyard, grateful that all the snow had melted.
It looked like something out of a magazine. The girls were all talking about how Emilia would appreciate the aesthetic because she was an interior designer.
I didn’t know much about that kind of stuff, but it looked great. A giant backdrop made of book pages said Will You Marry Me, Angel?
A large floral arch surrounded the backdrop. Baskets of flowers and oversized wooden lanterns with candles were everywhere, forming almost an aisle leading to the backdrop.
Everyone had just taken off. Wren and Axel had taken Melody home with them, and we said we’d pick her up after Winnie had taken the proposal photos.
Apparently that was a thing.
And my girl loved to capture moments on her camera.
“This looks amazing, right?” Winnie asked.
“It does. I’m really happy for him. For both of them.” I glanced down at my phone to see a text from Bridger. “They’re here. Where do we go?”
She chuckled. “Let’s just come around the corner over here so we stay out of sight. I’ll snap some pictures when they’re walking in, and then I’ll come out and take some photos from beside that bush. You just sort of stay on the side, okay?”
“Got it.” I rubbed my hands together as we moved to the side of the house.
Within minutes, the back door opened and we could hear Emilia gasp. I watched my cousin lead her through the yard to where the backdrop was.
“What is this?” Emilia asked with a croak.
“This is me asking you to marry me, angel,” he said as he dropped to his knee.
Winnie was already on the move, snapping photos and sliding around the other side of the bush. She was on the ground, and then standing all the way up.
She was determined to catch every angle and every moment.
Emilia had both hands over her face as she cried, and Bridger pulled her hands away. “No crying, baby. I want to look at you when I tell you how much I love you.”
Damn. Who knew my cousin was so smooth?
Emilia nodded, sniffing repeatedly, as tears streamed down her face.
“I know that I’m not an easy man,” he said, and it took everything in me not to laugh.
“But you make me want to be a better man. You’ve shown me what it means to truly love someone and to be loved back.
I already feel like the luckiest man in the world for knowing you.
But if you agree to forever with me, you will make me the happiest man in the world, Emilia.
You are my today, my tomorrow, and my forever. Will you marry me, angel?”
“You had me at ‘I’m not an easy man,’” she said, crying. “Yes, I would be honored to be your wife, Bridger Chadwick.”
He tugged her down and kissed her, and Winnie came out from behind the bush and moved closer, snapping even more photos of them.
After a few moments and some tears, Emilia looked up and smiled. “I was just going to say we need a photo to capture the moment. And here you are, Winnie.”
Bridger stood and tugged his new fiancée close as they posed for a few more pictures. Emilia gushed over the setting and the backdrop and they kissed and hugged, and Winnie caught every moment of it.
My girl was all heart.
She loved big, and I just stood there watching her do her thing.
“Okay, I think I’ve got plenty to work with.” She moved forward to hug them both goodbye, and I walked out from the side yard.
“Congrats. I’m so happy for you both,” I said, pulling my cousin in for a hug before doing the same to Emilia.
“Thanks for helping set this up, and thanks for making this backdrop and for taking the photos, Winnie,” Bridger said, and I was still in awe sometimes at the effect that Emilia had had on him. The dude was all up in his feels these days.
“I’m so happy that I got to be part of your special day,” Winnie told them. She waved as I took her hand and led her out of the yard.
“Be sure you blow out all those candles before you go inside, Casanova,” I shouted, and I heard them both laughing behind me.
“That was amazing,” Winnie said with a sigh.
“It was. Thanks for doing all of that.”
“Of course. I’m glad I could do it.” She smiled up at me. “Now let’s go get our girl.”
Our girl.
We really were our own little family now.