Chapter 12
chapter
twelve
Heath
We’re waiting in the shade for Jana to give us the word to walk down the aisle. My brother appears at my elbow.
“Emma just texted Bram,” he says.
“They’re married. It was bound to happen eventually,” I say.
He snorts.
“Aren’t you supposed to be already sitting? Waiting for the ceremony?”
“Probably, but I thought you’d want some information first.”
“Whatever it is, it can wait.”
He subsides. For approximately ninety seconds.
“Kiki went to the bridal suite this morning,” he says.
I go very still.
“Emma says your girl handled her.” A pause. “Emma also says, and I’m quoting here, that it was one of the most satisfying things she has ever personally witnessed.”
I look at him. He looks back at me with an expression of complete innocence that doesn’t suit his face at all.
“She’s fine,” he says, reading whatever is happening on my face with the accuracy of someone who has been doing it his whole life. “More than fine, from the sounds of it.”
I glance over at my son, who is watching for the wedding planner’s cue like a proverbial hawk. He hasn’t said anything about KiKi this morning which makes me wonder if he knows about the bridal room drama.
During the ceremony itself I do my best to focus on my son and his bride. But my eyes keep locking in on the maid of honor.
She’s standing across from me in her bridesmaid dress, that hugs her voluptuous curves perfectly.
Her wild red curls are still a bit wild, though clearly someone has tamed them somewhat today.
Her eyes are bright. She’s watching Juniper and Leo with an expression of open, unguarded happiness.
She’s clearly lost the battle with her tear ducts because her cheeks are wet.
She keeps swiping at them with the back of her wrist when she thinks no one is looking.
She looks beautiful.
She looks like mine.
That last thought arrives without ceremony or qualification. It doesn’t alarm me the way it probably should. It just sits there in my chest like something that has always been true and is only now being acknowledged.
I force my gaze back to my son just in time to hear him say I do in a voice that is completely steady and completely certain. How could I have ever questioned him and his decision to marry? I was being overly cautious. Not anymore.
The reception has been going on for an hour by the time I find a moment to breathe.
Father of the groom, it turns out, is a full-time occupation at the reception. There are toasts and photographs and the couple’s first dance. At one point Leo tried to convince me into a father-son dance, that I am mostly sure was a complete joke on his part.
He did grab me and pull me into a tight bear hug and right before he let go, he’d whispered, “All I’ve ever wanted was for you to be happy, Dad. If Clover makes you happy, then go after her.”
It was all the permission I needed. Now, I’ve just been waiting for the right moment to pull my girl into my arms and tell her how I feel.
Through all of it I am aware of Clover the way you’re aware of weather.
The specific quality of the air when she’s nearby.
The sound of her laugh from across the room.
The way she moves through the space, stopping to talk to people, head thrown back at something Emma says, hand on Juniper’s arm, completely at home in a room full of people she met forty-eight hours ago.
She has not looked at me since the ceremony.
I think she is being very deliberate about this.
The band shifts into something slower as the dancing gets properly underway, and I watch Leo pull Juniper onto the floor, and Graham find Lizzie.
Bram extends a hand to Emma with an earnest expression of a man who knows he married up and intends to keep earning it. James and Rebecca are already dancing.
This is the right time.
I cross the room.
Clover is standing at the edge of the dance floor with a glass of champagne, watching the dancers with a soft expression.
She’s been crying on and off since the vows, the productive kind of crying that happy people do at weddings, and her eyes are still slightly bright with the evidence of it.
She doesn’t see me until I’m beside her.
“Dance with me,” I say.
She looks up at me. “That’s not a question.”
“No,” I agree. “It’s not.”
Something moves across her face that I’m learning to read. The thing she does when she’s deciding between what she wants and what she thinks she should want, and the wanting is winning. I watch it win.
She takes my hand.
I lead her onto the floor and pull her in, and she comes without resistance, settling against me like she did on the couch that first night. That same quality of rightness locks into place. Her hand is in mine. My other hand is at the small of her back. We are very close.
She tips her head back to look at me. “Your speech was incredible.”
“Thank you.”
“I cried.”
“I noticed.”
“I cry at everything,” she says. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You cried at the vows, too.”
“Everyone cried at the vows.”
“Probably not KiKi,” I say.
Clover snort laughs. “The fillers injected into her face might prevent such things.”
Then it’s my turn to laugh.
We turn slowly with the music, and I am in no hurry. I have been in no hurry since I decided, somewhere over the Atlantic, that this woman was worth taking time over.
“I heard you had an interesting morning,” I say.
Her eyes flick up to mine. “Graham.”
“Graham. Via Emma. Via Bram.”
She considers this. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough to know that Kiki came to the bridal suite to start some drama, and that you handled it.” I look at her face. “Are you alright?”
“Completely,” she says, and she means it. I can tell she means it because Clover’s face is not built for anything other than the truth. “She’s not as frightening as she thinks she is.”
“No,” I say. “She’s not.”
“She said you were married to your work.” She says it lightly, watching my face. “That you were very attentive at first.”
“She wasn’t wrong that I worked a lot,” I say. “She was wrong about most of the rest of it. I dove headlong into my work when it became clear she’d married me for all the wrong reasons. There was no amount of trying on my part that would fix any of that.”
“I figured as much.” She looks up at me and gives me a dreamy smile. “Juniper told me about the books.”
I look at her. “What books?”
“Leo’s books from when he was a kid. The ones you bought twice.” Her voice is careful. “So you could follow along when Leo held the phone up to the page.”
I am quiet for a moment. Leo told Juniper that. Juniper told Clover. I find I don’t mind. I find I would like Clover to know things about me, the real things, the ones that don’t make it into the version of yourself that you present to the world.
“He knew,” I say. “He never said anything.”
“Of course, he knew,” she says softly. “He’s your son.”
We dance for a moment without talking.
“I owe you a conversation,” I say.
“You were going to have it last night before we were interrupted.”
“I was.” I look at her face, at the amber in her eyes, catching the reception lights. “But I think you were right to postpone it until after the wedding.”
“Oh, you do?”
I nod. “I think if I had said everything I’m going to say… If I’d said those things to you last night, you would have decided on reasons why not to believe me.”
Her mouth opens slightly, and then she nods. “I very well may have.”
“I spent most of today watching you from across various spaces and trying to be patient.”
“How’d that go?”
“Terribly.”
She laughs, that real unguarded laugh, and I feel it everywhere. “Okay,” she says. “Have your conversation.”
I pull her slightly closer, close enough that I can speak without raising my voice above the music.
“Last night I told you this thing between us wasn’t something I was willing to walk away from.
I meant it. I mean it now more than I did then, which I wouldn’t have thought was possible twenty-four hours ago but apparently is.
” I watch her face. “I know what this is, Clover. I knew on the plane. I knew before I knew your name.”
Her big brown eyes fill with tears.
“I know we live in different places and I know we come with a family situation that nobody would have designed on purpose. I also know that I am significantly older than you.”
“I wouldn’t say significantly,” she interjects.
“And I know that your job history suggests you have a complicated relationship with commitment, no offense—”
“Some taken,” she says, but she’s smiling.
“—and I don’t care about any of it. Not in a reckless way.
In the way of a man who has enough years on him to know the difference between a thing that’s complicated and a thing that’s wrong, and this is not wrong.
This is the least wrong anything has ever felt.
” I stop. I look at her. “I love you. I would’ve told you last night.
But I’m not sure you would’ve believed me. ”
The tears spill over. She lets them.
“You know what I keep thinking about?” she says.
“Tell me.”
“On the plane. When I told you about all the jobs.” She shakes her head slightly.
“You just listened. You didn’t try to fix it or offer advice or look at me like I was a problem.
You just listened and laughed and asked for more.
” She looks up at me. “Nobody does that. Nobody has ever asked for more. Not when it comes to me.”
“I’ll always do that,” I say. “You can tell me every ridiculous story you have and I will ask for more every time. I will always want more with you. More of you. More of your stories. More of your kisses. More of your time. I will never get my fill.”
She makes a sound that is halfway between a laugh and a sob, which is very Clover, and then she steps closer and puts her forehead against my chest, and I wrap both arms around her and we stop approximating dancing entirely and just stand in the middle of the floor while the song moves around us.
“I love you,” she says into my shirt. “I loved you somewhere over the Atlantic and it scared the hell out of me.”
I press my mouth to the top of her head. “I know.”
“You knew?”
“I had a strong suspicion.”
She leans back to look at me and her face is streaked and bright and completely beautiful. “That’s annoying.”
“Probably,” I agree.
She reaches up and puts her palm against my jaw, and I turn my face slightly into her hand without thinking about it, and she watches this happen with an expression that does something permanent to my chest.
“So what happens now?” she asks.
“Now,” I say, “we figure it out. Together. All the complicated logistics and the different cities.”
“As it turns out, I’m in between jobs, so I’m free to move wherever I want.”
“Is that so?”
She nods, quite pleased with herself.
“We figure all of it out.” I look at her. “But not tonight.”
“Not tonight,” she agrees.
“Tonight we dance.”
She settles back against me. I pull her in. The band plays. Across the floor Leo catches my eye over Juniper’s shoulder and lifts his chin in the smallest possible nod, and I nod back, and that is the entirety of that conversation and it is enough.
“Heath,” Clover says.
“Yeah, baby girl.”
“Your son bought the same books twice too, you know.” She pauses. “He does it for Juniper. Leaves them on her side of the bed with notes in the margins. Things he wants her to read.”
I close my eyes briefly.
“I thought you’d want to know,” she says quietly. “What you built.”
I hold her a little tighter, and we dance, and the night is warm, and my son is married, and the woman in my arms is mine, and I think that this is what it feels like when everything you didn’t know you were working toward finally arrives.