Chapter 42 Pop the Question
Pop the Question
WALKER
The departures hall is busier than it was five minutes ago. I come through the doors with Jonah's hand in mine, both of us at a dead run. I swing him up on my hip and take the escalator two steps at a time.
Upstairs, I scan the space. Eyes moving across the security lines, the families with their luggage, the coffee shop, the gate displays. Looking for that flash of copper hair.
“Do you see her?” Jonah asks, breathless.
“Not yet.”
“Dad, we have to find her before she goes through security or we can't get to her!”
“I know, JoJo. We're not giving up.”
The security line is long and slow and I scan every face in it with my heart hammering. She could already be through. She could already be at the gate, headphones in, gone to me in every way that matters before the plane even moves.
I pray we haven't missed her.
And then, from the corner of my eye, bright as a copper penny in the sun coming through the terminal windows, as eye-catching as the first time I ever glimpsed her in that lake, I see her coming out of the coffee shop. Iced coffee in hand. Looking down at her phone.
She has no idea we're here.
“There!” Jonah shouts, loud enough that three strangers turn to look.
We run across the terminal.
I'm not a man who runs through airports. I'm not a man who makes scenes in public places or acts without thinking. I came back to Marble Falls in search of a quiet, simple life. I wanted to put the circus behind me and raise my son and make my music and not need anything from anyone.
Then Sadie Sullivan walked into my life, and everything changed.
I'm aware, distantly, that people are recognizing me. The double-takes starting, the nudges, the phones coming up. Walker Rhodes, sprinting through Marble Falls airport with his five-year-old in tow.
Whatever's about to happen, it's already being filmed.
I don't care even a little bit.
We pull up to Sadie. If there were dust around we’d be kicking up a cloud of it, the way Jonah and I slide to sudden stop.
“Darlin',” I say, a little out of breath.
She turns.
The coffee cup nearly slips from her hand. She puts it on the display table next to her, hands trembling a little.
Her eyes go to me first. Then drop to Jonah. Then come back up to my face, and I can see the exact moment she understands that I’m going to tell her something important.
The people nearest to us have already stopped walking. A woman at the coffee shop counter has her phone up. Two teenage girls by the window are grabbing each other's arms.
I step up to her and take both her hands in mine.
Her fingers are cold from clutching the iced coffee. Almost as cold as her skin was that first day I touched her, when she emerged from that freezing lake.
This time, I don't let go.
“I owe you a question,” I say. “I've been telling you things all summer. What I feel. What I want. What I think you should do. I told you to go wander down that other path. I told you I'd be right here waiting. I told you all of that. But I never asked. So I'm asking.”
My thumbs move across her knuckles.
“You forged your own path. You kept your vow. You did every single thing you said you were going to do, and I am so proud of you for that. But I'm asking if that's still the life you want. Now that you know this one exists.”
She's looking at me with those blue eyes and she's not saying anything and I can't read her, which almost never happens. My heart is thundering and I've never wanted anything this badly in my entire life.
I keep going because stopping now isn't an option.
“If you want to work, there are jobs here.
A teaching job in Marble Falls, which I know isn't New York, but I'll turn this valley upside down to find you something worthy of you. Or you can write songs with me. Or both. Or neither.” I feel slightly insane.
I don't stop. “And if you stay and you hate it, you get on a plane and you go and I'll drive you to the airport myself.
But I'm asking you to try. I'm asking you to choose this. To choose us. Me and Jonah and Wild Rose and the whole damn thing.”
My voice comes out steady, which is a miracle considering my pulse is going a million miles an hour.
“You walked into my life and changed it forever. You loved my son like he was yours. You got me to pick up a guitar I hadn't touched in years. You made this ranch feel like a home again. I love you. I'm so fucking crazy in love with you, and I'll never stop loving you.”
“Dad!” Jonah exclaims. “Language!”
The crowd that has gathered around us, and it is a crowd now, fifty, sixty people, phones up, completely still, starts laughing.
Sadie has a hand over her mouth. Now she hiccups a laugh too, eyes shining.
“Thank you, Jonah,” she says.
And then her eyes come back to me. Big and blue and my whole world.
“I love you too,” she says softly. “I love you so much.” There's that familiar teasing glint in her eyes as she adds, “But I still don't hear a question, Walker.”
I drop down to one knee.
A woman somewhere behind me says, out loud, to nobody in particular, “Oh my God.”
Sadie goes completely still.
I've stood on the biggest stages in the world. Live at the Grammys, the Super Bowl halftime show, arenas on every continent. I’ve never been this terrified.
My heart is in my throat.
I pat my jeans, instinctively looking for a ring that doesn't exist. The ring I should have bought weeks ago, months ago, before I was too afraid to admit what I already knew.
“Psst.” Jonah's voice, a loud whisper. “Dad.”
I glance sideways.
He's standing with his hand already in his pocket. From it he produces a cherry ring pop, still in the wrapper, slightly warm from how long it's been in there. He holds it out to me with solemn dignity.
“I've got you,” he says.
I stare at my son. This boy who packed a cherry ring pop in his jacket pocket and has evidently been waiting for his father to get his act together.
“Jonah.” My voice comes out hoarse. “Did you know this would happen?”
He lifts one shoulder. “I figured you might need it in a pinch.”
I take the ring pop from my son's hand. Unwrap it.
I look up at Sadie.
She's laughing and crying simultaneously, her eyes moving between me and Jonah and the cherry ring pop. Her copper hair catching the sun light. Those blue eyes.
My girl.
I take a breath.
“Sadie Sullivan. Will you marry me? Will you be my wife? Will you be the queen of this family, now and forever?”
The terminal is completely silent.
She looks at me for one long moment. This woman who waded out of a freezing lake without a second thought. Who sees the real me, the man beneath all the fame and the walls I put up to protect myself. Who loved my son back to himself and loved me back to my music and my life.
There’s not even a moment of hesitation before she says, “Yes.”
Yes.
One syllable. The best thing I've ever heard in my entire life, and I’ve made a career out of beautiful sounds. Nothing comes close. Nothing ever will.
“Yes, Walker.” Her voice is soft and sure, completely without hesitation. “In every path, in every life, the answer is yes.”
Jonah pumps his fist.
“She said yes!” he announces to the departures hall at large.
The terminal erupts. There’s applause and “awws.” The sound of strangers who have been holding their breath all letting it out at once. Someone whistles. Someone cheers. I hear crying from at least two directions.
I stand up and slide the cherry ring pop onto my future wife's finger.
Then I take her face in both hands and I kiss her in the middle of Marble Falls airport with two hundred strangers cheering and phones filming and my son making a sound of pure triumphant satisfaction somewhere to my left.
Jonah throws himself between us, both arms around both of us, his face pressed into the space between our bodies.
“I knew it,” he says, muffled and victorious. “I knew it the whole time.”
I wrap one arm around Sadie and one around my son.
My dream life.
Mine to keep.