Chapter Thirty-One
TREY
Six Months Later
The day after Vivi walked back into my life, with Jameson’s engagement ring nowhere in sight and her first words to me being I love you, she moved into my house like she’d always belonged here.
I know because I physically drove her back to her townhouse the next morning and packed every suitcase I could find in her house full of her things and hauled it all back to my walk-in closet that is now ours.
We didn’t make the move one hundred percent official.
Her townhouse was still her house, technically.
She kept some clothes there, used it as a workspace when she needed to focus without me or Adeline interrupting her, and…
yeah, we definitely christened every surface in that place over the past six months.
The townhouse became our unofficial love shack and her occasional home office.
Over the last six months, she hired a new CFO whose priority is employees first, clients second, this time.
She and Jameson successfully restructured the board of directors’ power, knocking them down a notch and requiring at least higher vote percentages from the stockholders before making the kind of decisions they did with Vivi’s CEO position and Jameson’s position as the head of Holiday Industries.
Jameson and Natasha used the already perfectly planned elopement in the South of France. The press had a field day, eating up the Cinderella type story that, of course, Genevieve and her PR team spun. Genevieve got the optics she wanted, and the billionaire playboy narrative was officially dead.
Though as hard as Jameson and Genevieve have tried, they still haven’t been able to get the trust fund lawyers to agree to abolish the arranged marriage stipulation for Jameson’s siblings.
Two months ago, Vivi called the realtor. Last week, she signed the papers. And tomorrow, the new owners take possession of her townhouse.
Today is the final moving day.
The driveway is packed—my SUV, Vivi’s Land Rover, Slade’s truck, and the moving van our friends rented for the day.
The Hawkeyes turned up in full force, boxing, hauling, and cracking jokes.
Vivi bribed them with pizza, beer, and her triple-fudge brownies, which probably explains the speed of the loading process.
By early afternoon, the van is full, half the stuff already headed to a storage unit, the rest bound for our house. When the last load gets driven off, the place feels hollow. The walls echo.
Our friends say their goodbyes in the driveway, loud and full of plans for dinner later this week. Adeline hugs everyone twice. Then the last truck pulls away, and it’s just me, Vivi, and the townhouse she’s about to hand over for good.
I should’ve proposed earlier, maybe back when she told me she loved me in my doorway.
But I held back. Partly because I didn’t want her to feel like she was trading one engagement for another.
Partly because I wanted to make sure that when I did it, I did it right. Because Vivi deserves my best effort.
But the longer she goes without my ring on her finger, the more I can’t figure out why I haven’t just done it already.
Frankly, if I could go back in time, and know what I know now, I would have proposed to her the night we met in Oakley’s…
before Genevieve arranged everything with Jameson.
But maybe we both needed to go through that to know that this is right between us.
Maybe it all happens for a reason.
And I’m not letting any other asshole have the chance to put a ring on her finger.
“Adeline’s over at Isla’s for the next few hours,” I tell her casually as she drops the last box onto the kitchen counter. “She wanted to give us time to…I don’t know… ‘say goodbye to the old place,’ as she put it.”
Vivi grins, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Sounds like your niece has been talking to my sister.”
“Maybe.” I lean against the counter. “Or maybe she just knows her uncle has a plan.”
Her eyes narrow as if she knows I’m up to something. “A plan?”
Instead of answering, I walk to the far side of the kitchen, where the old dry-erase board leans against the wall.
She notices immediately. “Trey… you didn’t.”
Oh, I did.
On the left side I erased her list the same week we decided to be together, but I kept mine up there to remind her of all the reasons I’m the right one. And every once in a while, I add something to it, which always makes her laugh.
The list keeps on growing with more items.
Adeline needs you
We like your cooking
I can’t imagine the house without you
But there’s a new one at the bottom, in red marker:
Because I want you to be my wife
Her lips part, breath catching. “Trey…”
I take a step closer. Then another.
“I’ve been holding this in since the day I met you,” I say, my voice low but steady. “I wanted you before I knew your last name. I wanted you before I knew how much you’d change my life.”
I stop right in front of her, my hand lifting to tuck that same strand of hair back again.
“I’m whole because of you, and now I need to be able to look up in those season ticket seats and know that the last name you wear on your bedazzled jersey is yours too.”
Her eyes shine, and I know I’ve hit the truth dead-on.
I pull the ring from my pocket. Not one that screams “society engagement,” but the one I spent two weeks designing with a jeweler downtown. Simple, timeless, still WAGs size approved, and hers.
“Vivi Ann Newport, will you stay with us forever?”
She laughs through a sob. “God, yes.”
I slide the ring onto her finger. It fits like it was always meant to be there.
She’s in my arms a heartbeat later, kissing me like she’s trying to make up for all the time we wasted not saying what we really felt.
When we finally break apart, I mutter against her hair, “You know, I was going to bribe you into staying a little longer.”
Her lips brush my jaw. “Oh really? With what?”
I grin. “One last hurrah upstairs before we lock up.”
Her answering smile is pure mischief. “Lead the way, Hartley.”
I don’t lead. I scoop her up, her laugh ringing through the empty townhouse as I carry her up the stairs two at a time.
The bedroom door swings shut behind us, and the rest of the world disappears.