Chapter 30 #2
"Can I please—" Taz takes another breath. "Can I please propose to my wife?"
The field goes quiet. Even the bees seem to settle.
"Molly Edward," he says again. "Eleven years ago, there was a swarm on my truck and I didn't know what to do.
You came out of nowhere in a half-zipped bee suit and put your bare hands right into them, completely unafraid of everything I was terrified of.
You put those bees in a box and looked at me like I was ridiculous for being scared.
You were twenty-two and you already knew exactly who you were. "
His voice cracks. He clears his throat and keeps going.
Maggie is crying openly. I can hear her sniffling behind me.
"Ten years later, I almost lost you," he reads.
"Not to someone else, never to someone else, but to my own fear.
To the walls I built because I thought protecting you meant keeping things from you.
I was wrong. I was so wrong, Molly. Protecting you means making sure you never have to wonder.
It means telling you everything first. It means being in the room with you, every room, for the rest of our lives. "
He looks up from the paper. His eyes are wet.
"So I'm asking you again," he says, "not because we need a new marriage, but because I want you to know I choose this one. I choose you. I choose Clem. I choose this field and this farmhouse and whatever comes next, as long as it comes with you."
He gets down on one knee in the grass. The paper is trembling in his grip.
"Marry me again," he says. "Let me do it right this time. Let me spend the rest of my life proving I'm the man you thought you married."
The sunset is painting everything gold. My grandmother's field. The hives I rebuilt. The oak tree that survived losing a limb. My daughter in her grandmother's arms. My family, all of them, waiting.
"Yes," I say.
He lets out a breath that sounds months old. Maybe it is.
"And I love you," I say.
He goes completely still.
"I love you, Taz," I tell him. "I never stopped. I just—I couldn't say it when I didn't know if I could survive meaning it."
"Molly," he whispers.
"But I can. I can mean it now." I'm crying, which I hate, which I'm not going to apologize for. "I love you. I love you. Is that enough times or do you need more?"
"Once more." He's crying too, standing up, reaching for me. "Please. Once more."
"I love you," I tell him.
He kisses me, and the field erupts. Maggie whooping, Az cheering, Eli wiping his eyes, Clem clapping her hands because everyone else is happy so she is too. And Taz is sliding the ring from its chain, sliding it onto my finger where it belongs.
"I need a date," I say against his mouth. "For the vow renewal."
"Whenever you want," he says.
"Before she turns one," I tell him. "I want her there."
"Done," he says.
"And I'm writing my own vows this time," I add. "Real ones, on paper. You don't get to read them first."
He laughs, wet and broken and happy. "I've already rewritten mine six times. The paper's falling apart."
"Then you better figure out which version you're using," I tell him.
His forehead drops to mine. The ring glints in the golden light.
"Thank you," he whispers. "For giving me another chance to be what you deserved from the beginning."
"I wanted you," I tell him. "Now you're here."
Clem starts fussing, and the moment breaks, and suddenly everyone is hugging us at once. Maggie kisses my cheek. Az squeezes my hand. Eli tells Taz he's proud of him, which makes Taz's face crumple.
Later, much later, Maggie takes Clem for the night. "You two need time alone," she says firmly. "I've got eight containers of yogurt and her favorite blanket. Don't argue."
We don't argue.
The farmhouse is quiet without Clem. Quiet in a way it hasn't been since we started rebuilding: no hammering, no sawing, no baby sounds. Just us and the creaking floors and the stars coming out through the new windows.
Taz lights candles while I pour wine. We drink it on the porch swing, my feet in his lap, watching the last pink fade from the mountains.
I tip my head back against the swing chain. The ring catches the candlelight.
"My grandmother liked you," I say. "Eventually. After she stopped threatening you."
"She did threaten me," he says, with feeling.
"Anyone who wanted to marry me would have been threatened," I tell him. "Extensively. Possibly with farm equipment."
He laughs. "She showed me the shovel shed on my first visit. Very thorough tour."
"She liked to establish expectations early," I say.
He settles my feet closer. The swing creaks gently. The bees are asleep in their hives, and the farmhouse stands solid behind us with its nearly finished porch trim.
"One shingle," I say.
"What?" he asks.
"Tomorrow," I say. "You're fixing the one shingle you missed."
"First thing," he promises, and squeezes my foot.
His thumb starts moving on my ankle while we talk. Lazy at first, circling the bone. Then slower. Then up the back of my calf, under the hem of my dress, and down again, like he has all the time in the world and plans to spend every minute of it right there. I stop hearing the crickets.
I slide my foot higher in his lap. He goes very still. I press down, just a little, and feel exactly how much he's been thinking about this since the field, and his fingers close around my ankle like a cuff.
"Molly." It's a warning. Or a request.
"Mm?" I ask, all innocence.
He turns his head and looks at me in the candlelight, and his eyes drop to my mouth and stay there. The swing has stopped moving. Neither of us noticed when.
We don't stay on the porch.
I drain the last of my wine, set the glass on the rail, and haul him up by a fistful of his shirt.
The swing creaks in protest at being abandoned.
Starlight catches the ring on my finger, old gold with a brand-new promise in it, and for once the sight of it doesn't make me flinch.
Clem is at Maggie's with her yogurt stockpile and her favorite blanket.
The farmhouse is ours. The night is ours.
"Inside," I tell him. "Right now. Before I decide the porch rail is sturdy enough for what I want to do to you."
"Yes, ma'am," he says, grinning, already hard against my hip, and lets me drag him through the door without once looking anywhere but my mouth.
We don't make it to the bedroom gracefully.
I shove him into the freshly painted hallway wall hard enough to rattle a picture frame and kiss him like the proposal is still going on inside my mouth.
He hoists me up like a sack of feed he's very fond of.
My legs go around his waist, my dress rides up to my hips, and when his palms find bare thigh he makes a noise that's half laugh, half groan, muffled against my neck.
"Loud is allowed," I tell him against his teeth. "Your mother is twenty minutes away, Clem is drowning in yogurt, and I have spent a solid year being quiet about wanting you. I'm done. I want the headboard involved. I want the bees to file a noise complaint."
"Thank Christ," he growls, and carries me the rest of the way to the bedroom we've been rebuilding board by board: a new mattress, my grandmother's old quilt, the window she used to throw open every morning for the mountain air.
He drops me on the bed hard enough that I bounce, and I laugh out loud.
"Warn me if I get too happy. I've got a lot stored up.
It's been sitting in the barn like overstock. "
"Dump all of it on me," I tell him. "Everything must go."
I yank his shirt over his head and fling it at the chair.
It misses. I don't care. His tattoos look like a party in the lamplight, every brand and line of ink, that honeybee included, still making my throat go tight.
"Clothes off. Ring stays on. Everything else is up for negotiation, and I'm voting naked and filthy. "