Page 20 of Her Jolly Cowboy
Frankie turns her back to the crowd, counts to three, and launches the bouquet like a quarterback going for the end zone.
It arcs high, roses and pinecones and baby’s breath flying through the air, and lands square in Holly’s startled arms. The barn erupts.
Holly stares at the bouquet like it’s a live grenade, then slowly lifts her eyes to me, but I’m already moving.
I hop up onto the platform in one leap, drop to one knee right there in front of God and half of Montana, and pull the little velvet box from my pocket that I’ve been carrying since yesterday.
The music cuts. Someone gasps. Holly’s mouth falls open.
“Holly Jameson,” I say, loud enough for the whole room to hear, “I knew I was in trouble the second you stepped out of that SUV in four-inch heels during a snowstorm. You’ve been bossing me around and making me fall stupidly in love with you every damn day since.”
Laughter and awws ripple through the crowd.
I flip open the box. Inside is a necklace that used to belong to my great-grandmother.
“I’m not asking you to marry me tonight,” I continue. “I’m asking you to let me spend the rest of my life earning the right to ask you properly one day when you’re ready, when we’ve figured out whatever beautiful life we’re building together. But I need you to know, right here, right now, in front of everybody we love: you’re it for me. You’re my forever.”
Her eyes are swimming, and the bouquet trembles in her hands.
“Say something, Boss Lady,” I tease, voice rough.
She drops the bouquet, launches herself at me, and kisses me so hard we almost topple off the platform.
The barn explodes, cheers, whistles, Grandma Martha yelling “That’s my boy!” at the top of her lungs.
I kiss her back until we’re both dizzy, then pull away just enough to fasten the necklace around her neck. I stand, lift her off her feet, and spin her around.
Later, much later, after the cake has been eaten, after Rhett and Frankie disappear in a shower of sparklers, after the last guests stumble toward their beds, Holly and I sneak out the side door into the snow.
It’s falling thick and quiet, blanketing the world in white. The barn lights glow behind us like a promise.
She tips her head back, catches flakes on her tongue, then looks at me.
“I used to think happily-ever-after was just another box on a checklist,” she says softly.
“And now?”
She steps close, slides her hands inside my open coat, and smiles up at me with snow in her lashes.
“Now I think it’s this. You and me and whatever comes next.”
I kiss her under the falling snow, slow and deep and full of every tomorrow we’re going to build together.
When we finally break apart, she laughs, breathless.
“Take me home, cowboy.”
So I do. I scoop her up, carry her through the snow to my cabin, our cabin, and kick the door shut behind us.
Outside, the storm keeps falling.
Inside, we keep falling too.
Epilogue - Holly
Five Years Later
I stand at the kitchen window of our ridiculously perfect log house that Luke has added onto in the years since we met, and watch the chaos I used to orchestrate for thousand-person galas now reduced to a dozen toddlers in elf hats chasing each other through snowdrifts.
