Page 119 of Fake Shot

Stepping out of the car, he holds his hand back toward me, and I take it again, sliding across the back seat. “Where are you taking me, exactly?”

“You’ll see.”

He uses the flashlight on his phone to light the way, and I hold on to his arm tightly as we follow a paved path downthe gentle slope of a hill. We’re surrounded by trees so thick I can’t see how wide the path is, or even see the sky through their branches above us. But after only a minute of walking, there’s light ahead. We reach the end of the path and the full moon above glows brightly, a marked contrast to how dark it was under the thick trees. In front of us is a large, level clearing and beyond that, the gently lapping waves of a lake.

But the part that takes my breath away isn’t the spectacular view in front of me, where the earth and water meet with trees and mountains all around us and the bright smattering of stars in the dark sky. No, the thing that takes my breath away are the hundred or so glass hurricane vases with candles set up in the middle of the clearing. They’re in the shape of a large rectangle, with lines of candles inside forming smaller rectangles.

I glance up at Colt, and his look as he gazes down at me is full of love, but also...nerves?

“Oh my god, is this what I think it is?”

His low rumble of a laugh fills the space. “I highly doubt it.”

“Okay,” I say, wondering if that means he isn’t proposing to me tonight? “So, what is this, then?”

“Let me walk you through it,” he says, walking toward a straight line of candles that run parallel to the shore, and closest to the road we just walked down.

I follow beside him, his arm wrapped around my lower back protectively, like he’s trying to make sure I don’t trip. Which is good, since the first thing that happens as we step into the clearing is that the toe of one of the flip-flops I put on at the reception catches on a tree root sticking out of theuneven ground, and I start to fall forward. Colt’s arm keeps me upright.

He stops between two candles, dead center on the line. “I want you to imagine a big front porch here, with a doorway.” Moving forward, he brings me along. “This is the entryway. To the left”—he points—“is a den. To the right is the dining room.” He walks a few steps farther between two rows of candles.

“Beyond that is the kitchen”—he points right—“and on the other side of this wide hallway is the bathroom.” He leads us a few more steps closer to the lake. “And this is the great room. Imagine a wall with several sets of French doors surrounded by windows overlooking the water, and outside, a large screened-in porch where we can set up rocking chairs to watch the sunset.”

It’s the rocking chair reference that does it for me, and I gasp. “Colt . . . is this . . .”

“The floor plan of your great aunt’s house on Lake Sunapee? Yes.”

“Is that where we are? In Sunapee?”

“No. And I think you’ll like this better, actually. Follow me through our glass doors to our porch and down to the lake,” he says, and walks forward, through a row of candles. We’re only about thirty feet from the water now, and I can see a brand-new dock jutting out into the lake. The dock is at least twenty-five feet long with a huge platform at the end that would be a perfect place to set up chairs and read a book, or dive into the lake on a hot summer day.

He steps up onto the dock first, then holds out a hand to me as I step up onto it.

“You going to tell me where we are now?” I ask, wishingmy phone wasn’t sitting back in the car so I could just take a look and see exactly where I am.

When we get to the end of the dock, he wraps his arms around me, pulling me to him so my back is resting up against his chest. He kisses the top of my head, then extends his arm, pointing out at the lake. “I thought you would like it here, because this little cove is quiet and private, but we still have views of the mountains across this part of the lake. And the big lake is right down there.” Lifting his arm to the left, he points to an opening beyond which all I see is water sparkling in the moonlight.

“Where are we?”

“Lake Winnipesaukee.”

My heart skips a beat. Audrey and Drew have been looking for a place up here over the last few months, because he grew up coming to his family’s cabin on this lake every summer and wants to continue the tradition with Audrey and Graham.

“So that I can be close to Audrey?” I ask.

He turns us toward the shoreline and that’s when my eyes land on a house, its windows lit up in the moonlight, sitting just to the side of our future house. There is a fairly narrow line of trees between our properties, and I’m actually surprised it’s so close to where our house will be. Coming out from that house is another dock, running parallel to this one. There are no other properties in this small cove that I can see.

“I hope we like our neighbors,” I say, hugging his arms where they wrap around my abdomen.

His chest shakes against my back as his low laugh rumbles against my hair. “We do.”

“Are you ...” I can’t even fathom what he’s telling me. There’s no way my sister bought a lake house and didn’t tell me. Is there? “Did Drew and Audrey buy that house?”

“Drew bought it, and we subdivided the property. I had this area cleared so that I could build you your dream house right next to your sister. I have the original plans to your great aunt’s house, so we can rebuild it exactly if you want,” he says, and now it makes sense why he was able to describe a house he’d never been to. But how did he even get those drawings? And how long has he been planning this? “Or you can have Audrey design you something completely different. But I knew that, either way, you’d want to be involved.”

I look up at him, almost unable to breathe because the realization of what he’s done for me has my heart expanding in my chest so that there’s no room for anything but my love for him. “You know me so well.”

“And yet not as well as I want to,” he says. “I feel like I’ll never stop wanting to learn new things about you.”

---