Page 115 of Words We Didn't Say

“This ring locks us in until the last curtain call.”

“And all my schemes?”

“I know I promised to hit play on your villain theme song, but I’ll make you a whole damn playlist if you agree to marry me.”

Eden fell to her knees and threw her arms around my neck. Her lips landed on mine for one delirious kiss before she nuzzled in the crook of my neck. “I want you to hear my answer before any of those cheeky busybodies get in on my moment,” she whispered, waiting a breathless pause, before simply saying… “Yes.”

Our adventure started when I walked up to a girl crying on a step in Clovelly, and I said, “Hey.”

Our next chapter would start with just one other word: “Yes.”

And that word was so much better.

It was the best damn word I’d ever heard.

Epilogue

Zach

Three years later

A chubby hand wrappedaround my finger. Not the one where I wore my wedding band, the one next to that.

I glanced down at the tiny girl hovering beside me. The wispy chocolate pigtails on her head bobbed as she peered around my parents’ backyard, and she clutched her threadbare pink bunny under her chin, her thumb in her mouth.

My little girl. Josie.

I squatted, steadying myself with a hand on the grass. Closer to forty than thirty, my knees creaked, not quite what they used to be. Josie shuffled her tiny high-tops along the grass, the soft pad of her diaper butt in pink overalls parking on my knee.

“What do you think, JoJo?” I asked. “Excited?”

Her enormous brown eyes tore away from the corner of the yard where Dad and Andie scrambled to finish building her new jungle gym. She blinked up at me. Her thumb dropped out of her mouth with a slurpy pop.

“Yeth!” A toothy smile flashed but quickly disappeared. She’d inherited her mother’s scowl…and impatience. “All done?”

“Soon.”

Not a word she enjoyed hearing. “No” was high on the list too. Josie’s thumb popped back in her mouth—precisely where she liked it—and she sucked furiously, surveying her domain with serious eyes.

“We might be here a while,” I muttered.

The whole jungle gym debacle had taken longer than the motley crew had estimated over breakfast. Alotlonger.

“Three hours,” Andie had promised Eden.

“Two.” Dad had upped the ante. “Tops. Our girl will be in her tux, ready to leave for the awards on time.”

“Promise.” Andie had crossed her heart.

And now it was—I glanced at my watch—yep, six hours and counting.

Dad and Andie were usually a good team. They’d constructed the sandpit in record time. A few trips to the nursery had finished the landscaping for the new pool.

But I’d learned never to trust Dad and Andie to finish anything except a lot of beers when the cricket was on. They’d been distracted by the TV. I’d covered Josie’s ears to avoid her hearing most of the ranting when a guy in baggy whites was “out” for something called a “duck.”

Those shenanigans also gave me a clue Andie was probably the bad influence behind Josie declaring, “Fut that,” with her hands on her tiny hips when I’d told her tea party time was over.

I huddled Josie closer. She giggled when Dad hollered out to Andie. He’d gotten himself tangled in the metal ropes trying to hang the swing.

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