Epilogue
EPILOGUE
Cody
M y hands shook, but I steadied them. You’ve got this, you’ve got this, you’ve got this. I blew out a breath and a white cloud billowed out. Of course it was well below freezing this afternoon, and I’d chosen to stand on a street corner just before dusk because, why? Oh, that’s right, I was an idiot.
No. Not an idiot. Just completely gone for my woman and ready to put it out there to the world. More than ready to make clear to everyone that after more than a decade of waiting to be with her, I had absolutely no calm about it.
There she came, hustling up the street from the market, magazines tucked under her arm. I shook my head at her dorky obsession with celebrity gossip.
When she saw me standing on the corner of Main Street, right where it curved around to intersect with Elk Street, she paused. “Hey! I thought I was meeting you at the restaurant?”
We’d planned dinner for tonight and I’d made sure to get reservations because Silverton was absolute insanity during the holidays and all the more so right before the new year. People traveled from all over the world to ski Silver Ridge Peak and stay in our small town. The population typically doubled at high season, and here we were just on the front end of it. But I wanted something romantic to follow this stunt up, assuming it went well.
“Yeah, figured I’d wait here.”
She tipped her head to the side. “Okay. Well, I just got my weekly fix of magazines and all anyone’s printing is that Miss Mayhem is apparently a drug dealer or something? That she supposedly caused her mom’s overdose and—I don’t know. It doesn’t really add up, but they’re gunning for her.”
Her beautiful face pulled into a frown. She loved Miss Mayhem, the pop icon and apparently, not so great of a person. This was not a good start to the moment, though, so I grabbed the small stack of glossy paper and tucked them under my arm. “I’m taking these for a minute and we’ll circle back to that, okay?”
She looked around like I was an insane person. Flakes of snow drifted down around us, and the lights strung into the trees, spiraling up street lights, and criss-crossing the street gave the rapidly dimming space a cheery glow.
“Cody, are we going?—”
I dropped to one knee right there on the street corner and held her hands in mine. Her eyes widened and she sucked in a little gasp.
“Charlotte Lane, I love you more than I can possibly express. I’ve spent too long hiding, too long not being brave. I’ve taken choices away from you instead of giving you options. So tonight, I’m asking for what I want and giving you a pretty big choice. I know it’s early, but in some ways it’s coming really late. So now I’m asking you to choose me and be my wife. Will you marry me?”
She laughed and yanked me to my feet, wrapping her arms around me before I was fully upright. People on the street clapped and whistled, and it distantly registered there was a decent crowd.
“You’re a crazy person! Of course I’ll marry you, but you didn’t have to kneel in the middle of the sidewalk at peak season!”
Her mouth met mine enthusiastically, but when the cheers rose at the contact, we both pulled back and laughed. Familiar faces surrounded us—Wyatt and his brother Warrick, Kieran from the bar, Leo and Jonas Bauer. Our families were there too—I’d been bold enough to tip them off, so they’d made sure to show up but stay hidden. And that was just the people I recognized, though I knew there’d be more to congratulate us.
“I wanted to show you I’m not scared to say what I want, and I’m certainly not scared to want a life with you. Marriage, kids, the whole thing.”
She beamed and kissed me again. “Sign me up.”
* * *
Thank you for reading Cody and Charlotte’s story! I hope you enjoyed this little taste of Silver Ridge. Don’t miss Wyatt’s story in Almost Perfect and Warrick’s story in Almost Real .