Page 109 of Stay With Me

“Aw, Charlie”—Emily looks at me with pleading eyes and pushes out her bottom lip—“they’re best friends. Maybe we should get him, too.”

I hesitate.

She looks damn beautiful, and it’s hard for me to say no to her.Even so, two dogs?Molly is looking at me with literal puppy dog eyes as well.

I lift the other pup off my chest and hold him in front of my face to get a good look at him. His floppy ears and giant paws are adorable. When he lurches forward and plants a slobbery kiss on my cheek, I’m done for.

“Okay,” I whisper.

“Seriously?” Emily sounds utterly shocked and her jaw drops.

“Yeah, I mean we can’t separate them if he’s up for adoption as well. We’ll call him Max. Max and Molly.”

I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have made Emily any happier in that moment. The sheer elation on her face—eyes twinkling and a smile so wide I swear it must hurt—makes me think I’d get her all ten puppies if she wanted them.

We take care of our business with the owner and then head home.

Emily is so in love with the puppies, holding both on her lap for the hour and a half drive back to Elladine from the Columbus area.

When we’re close to the house, we stop at the pet store and carry Max and Molly in, then spend forty-five minutes buying collars and leashes, tennis balls, stuffed toys, food bowls, and some dog food.

When we’refinallyhome, we park and climb out of the car, setting the pups on the ground to explore. Emily encourages them to follow her to the area where she wants to train them to do their business, and when they pee in the spot she leads them to, she praises them like they’ve accomplished a heroic feat.

I watch her from about twenty feet away, and though it’s only been three weeks since she told me she would stay with me, it’s like she’s been here forever. And hell, am I grateful for that. I smile as I watch her, the woman who made my house a home.

* * *

EMILY

I chuckle under my breath as I stand at the stove searing chicken for dinner and listen to Charlie baby talk to Max and Molly when they do something he wants them to do. He’s been working with them for five minutes, doing some training just a few feet away from where I’m cooking. Who would have thought that all it would take to reduce my ruggedly handsome, muscular, lumberjack firefighter of a man into a pile of mush would be two adorable lab puppies?

As I turn my attention back to the sizzling pan over the range top burner, I’m overcome with emotion. My heart is immensely full. With Charlie, I’ve found the most soul-stirring love. That’s the kind of love he’s shown me in this last year. I had a broken heart, and he showed up for me as I walked through a place of deep pain and intense darkness on my way to healing.

It will never cease to amaze me how a man like Charlie could ever have thought he didn’t deserve me. How he could think he’d ever turn out like his father when Charlie has alwaysseenme, always built me up.

While it took Charlie and me a while to find our way to each other, the way this man has loved me through the years—even when I couldn’t see it—will stay with me for the rest of our lives.

EPILOGUE

SEVEN MONTHS LATER

CHARLIE

As I steer through the curves on Route 47, it takes everything in me to drive past the section where Emily and Trina had their crash at the end of last summer. In fact, I’ve had to make this drive four times in the last two weeks to be able to do it without feeling on the verge of a panic attack—because that’s definitely not the vibe I’m going for today.

We have Molly and Max buckled into their seatbelts in the backseat and their heads are sticking out their windows as they live their best lives, taking in all the scents on our drive to Meadow Creek. They’re smart dogs. They know car trips mean either a long hike is in store for them or a trip to the Elladine Creamery, and doggie cups of ice cream are coming their way—sometimes it’s both.

And Emily, God, she’s just beautiful sitting in the passenger seat next to me, hair in a ponytail, leggings, an Elladine Fire Department T-shirt, and hiking boots on. But it’s her smile and her laughter that make her the most stunning. Watching the dogs’ jowls flapping in the wind on these car rides is a source of joy for her, no matter how many trips we take them on. It’s damn adorable that it amuses her so much.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you, when you were working yesterday, your mom and I walked the dogs down to the lake for a swim. I asked her if she might be interested in the part time job that’s opening as a lunch aide at the elementary school. She seemed excited by the possibility.”

Hell, could this woman be any more perfect?

I get choked up with emotion for a few seconds when I think about how it was Emily who finally convinced my mom to come stay with us after the last major incident between my parents. The day Mom left my father, we packed enough clothes to get her through a week or so. Then, the next weekend, my friends really stepped up. Emily, Trina, Ben and I went to my parents’ and packed up the rest of her things while Shayna and Finn stayed with my mom at our house.

I smile when I remember finding Emily out in my parents’ yard pulling down all of my mom’s bird-feeders and loading them in the back of my truck. She insisted we take those and my mom’s garden bench so my mom would feel more like our home was her home.

When my father arrived home near the end of our packing, he threw a hissy fit, saying that everything my momthoughtshe owned was bought withhismoney, so it belonged to him. Ben shut him right down, then let him know a protection order was being filed against him and, if he violated it, Ben would petition the judge for the maximum penalty—jail time. My dad is smart enough to know he’d lose his job if that happened, and he backed off almost immediately.

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