Page 104 of Hand Picked
“What? No! You can’t,” Luke blurted, stepping all over my romantic declaration, and I laughed out loud, just like I did every damn day that this man was in my life.
I took his hand and held it up, twining mine around it so we were palm to palm. The moment felt just as right, just as fated, in the stone-sober bright light of day as it had on that cold, dark February night.
“You brought me hope. I didn’t realize I’d lost it until you found it and brought it back to me. You helped me trust in people again. To believe that life can be as full of good things as bad. And I’m keeping you. If you need me to blow that bugle all day every day to prove it—”
“Oh, God, please don’t,” Knox said. “That thing sounds like the bellow of a constipated elephant.”
“Hey!” Van the bartender appeared out of nowhere and smacked Knox on the back of the head. “Respect the damn bugle, Sunday. That thing is good luck.”
I laughed. I was definitely going to respect it from now on, but the bugle wasn’t lucky. The only luck I’d needed was the man in my arms, the starry-eyed flatlander I’d fallen in love with.
“Good enough for me,” Ernie York said, sniffling and drying his eyes. “That was… beautiful.” His wife patted him on the back gently. “I hereby declare, by the power vested in me by the Town of Little Pippin Hollow, that the articles outlined in the Little Pippin Hollow Handfast Act of 1762, that Thomas Webb Sunday and Luke Guilford Williams are hereby…”
He paused dramatically, as if giving me and Luke one final chance to back out.
The two of us looked at each other and grinned; then Luke wrapped his arms around my neck and kissed the hell out of me—or as myhusbandwould say, the heckity out of me—right in front of all the people we loved best.
“…married!” he concluded happily. “What the bugle has joined together, let no man put asunder.”
Epilogue
LUKE
August
“Where are you taking me? I was supposed to be at a Hook-Up twenty minutes ago,” I said, hoping Webb didn’t accidentally walk me into a tree branch.
“Surely there must be a better term for your knitting club meetings,” he sighed. “And no, I already told Phillip you were missing it because you had plans. With yourhusband.”
I grinned under my blindfold.
If you had told me six months ago, when Webb and I first blew the unity bugle, that Webb Sunday would one day refer to me as hishusband, I’d have assumed you, too, had partaken of one too many Rusty Spikes, because such a thing could never happen.
Even if you’d told me back in April, on the day Webb and I officially pledged ourselves as husbands to one another in front of the whole town, I wouldn’t have believed the man who hated relationships could be so damn comfortable with the word.
But four months had passed since that day. Four chaotic, heart-squeezingly wonderful months. And now I knew better.
Because over those four months, I’d sat many a night in a chilly hockey arena, cheering myself hoarse, screaming, “Two hands on the stick, Aiden!” and “Hey! Dirty hit, ref!” while Webb told the other parents, “What can you do?My husbandis kind of a hockey fanatic, especially when our kid’s in the playoffs.”
Over those four months, Webb had proudly bragged to every tourist who came through Sunday Orchard—and there was a metrictonof them after Hand-Fast Watch went viral on YouTube, much to Ernie York’s delight—that all the hand-woven textiles in the gift shop werehishusband’s designs.
Over those four months, my mom and Sue had simply extended their visit longer and longer until they were officially living in the fixed-up farmhouse, helping me with plans for the Hollow Fiber Arts Center that I hoped to get off the ground the following year, and Webb introduced them to everyone he knew as “the women who helped makemy husbandso amazing.”
And over those four months, every time Aiden’s new collie puppy, Black Bear, sat on my lap while I read a chapter book to Aiden—even when she grew way, way too big to fit there—Webb would turn to Amanda, who was at our house more often than not these days, and say, “That’smy husband,” in this tone of quiet satisfaction that made it clear he wouldn’t have done a dang thing differently, even down to the bugles and the commemorative scrolls… and she’d smile and say, “I know.”
“Okay,now. You can take off your blindfold.”
I pulled off the bandana and blinked at the late-summer sun streaming through the full branches of the nearest apple trees.
“We’re in the orchard,” I said, stating the obvious.
“Yes,” Webb said excitedly. “But not just any orchard. The Pond Orchard.Ourorchard.”
I got the feeling he was trying to make a big sentimental point about how it had been the contentious disagreement about this parcel of land that had brought us together, but… it hadn’t been. Not really. Not any more than the Rusty Spikes or the Unity Bugle had.
Webb Sunday and I had been meant for each other all along. It had just taken us a little while to figure it out.
“So it is,” I agreed. “Oooh! Did you bring me up here to see the Black Oxford?” I gestured toward the nearby dwarf tree. Since Webb’s favorite activity—well, his favoritefamily-friendlyactivity—was walking the trees with me and Aiden, it was safe to say I was becoming as much of a tree expert as Aiden was. “I know you were worried about the leaf spots, baby, but it looks like it’s really improv—ooof!”
