Page 40 of Befriending the Bear (Forestville Silver Foxes #6)
CALLOWAY
Six Months Later
F raser asked me to marry him on a rainy spring day in April, and I immediately said yes, then promptly burst into tears. But when those had dried, I said yes all over again.
We didn’t want a big wedding. Neither of us had the patience for unnecessary pomp or extended rituals.
Neither of us liked being the center of attention.
So we kept it small and quiet—quieter than most people thought we could manage in a town like Forestville, but this town had a way of protecting its own when it mattered most.
We were married at the courthouse on a June morning, with cloud cover thick enough to feel cozy instead of ominous. The air smelled like blooming honeysuckle and wet bark, and the sidewalks still glistened from the rain that had passed through earlier.
Fraser wore a button-down the color of moss, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. I wore navy, my favorite. Neither of us bothered with ties or jackets.
We didn’t exchange rings. We’d talked about it but settled on matching silver bands to wear on chains around our necks instead. Practical. Private. Ours. We’d pick them up later that week, after the jeweler in the next town over had finished engraving the inside of each with Day by Day .
Eleanor, with her perfectly coiffed silver hair and a bouquet of wildflowers from her garden, stood beside me. Officially, she was my witness. Unofficially, she was my person.
We’d debated inviting our parents, but if I invited mine, Fraser would have to invite his, including his brothers, and that would bring a tension neither of us wanted.
So I’d called my mom and explained that we wanted to keep it very small.
Much to my surprise, she’d understood, and they had sent a sweet gift—proof that even after all these years, people could still surprise me.
Fraser’s best man was, to everyone’s surprise, Macallister Heald—gruff and grim and dressed in what he insisted were his “formal boots.” They’d grown close over the last few months, and the fact that the town hermit had agreed to appear not only in public but even give a speech spoke volumes about his affection for Fraser.
Jamie cried through the entire ten-minute ceremony. They wore a suit jacket covered in patches and pins, half of them references I didn’t understand, and hugged me three different times afterward. “You did it,” they whispered. “You let yourself be loved again.”
It was only the fifth time I cried that day.
Brianna baked us the most amazing wedding cake with lemon frosting, and when we cut it, Fraser smushed a bit on my nose and then kissed it off. I was horrified. He was delighted. Everyone else cheered.
Martinez flew in to be there, representing Fraser’s old crew.
He was still limping from his latest mishap on the line, where he’d broken his ankle.
He told Fraser he looked stupidly happy and then offered to fight anyone who questioned the legality of our marriage.
Fraser told him no one was questioning anything. Martinez flexed anyway.
We took pictures in front of the courthouse steps, the two of us standing close in the way we always did, like magnets, like gravity. My hand resting over Fraser’s heart, his arm around my waist.
Later, we had our wedding dinner at Sunshine Corner. Ennio served roasted chicken with lemon and rosemary, and the most amazing potato gratin I’d ever tasted in my life.
Macallister gave a short, dry toast after the ceremony that amounted to, “Don’t screw it up.” It still made me cry because I understood like no one else what it had cost him to stand up there and speak. When I hugged him, he awkwardly patted my back but didn’t push me away.
After dinner, we walked home. No fanfare. No limo. Just the two of us, hand in hand, beneath the stars. The pavement still held the memory of midday warmth, and somewhere nearby, someone played an acoustic guitar.
It wasn’t magic. Not the cinematic kind.
No swelling violin or fireworks. It was two men who had lived full, hard, quiet lives.
Who had both loved and lost. Who had both spent years thinking they’d missed their window.
It was a second chance we never saw coming.
A last verse added to a song we thought had already ended.
When we got back to the cottage, Fraser stopped me shy of the front porch. He turned to me. “Close your eyes.”
I did without hesitation.
“Please imagine me carrying you across the threshold.”
I smiled. God, I loved that man. “Should I p-pretend you’re not using your c-cane too?”
Fraser’s warm, low chuckle filled the quiet space between us. “Sweetheart, if I had a third arm, I’d be sweeping you off your feet like a goddamn romance novel hero.”
“Well, as long as we’re p-playing pretend, can you be w-w-wearing a tuxedo and a f-firefighter’s helmet?”
“Oh, I see,” he said, stepping closer. “Now it’s a fantasy.”
“You st-started it.”
His lips brushed my cheek. “All right. Open your eyes.”
I did—and immediately forgot every word in the English language.
A string of warm white lights curved along the porch beams, casting a soft glow over the wood.
A bouquet of blue hyacinths and yellow daffodils stood beside the door, nestled in one of my grandmother’s old ceramic pitchers.
And hanging just beneath the porch light, swaying a little in the breeze, was a small wooden sign.
“Calloway and Fraser Gilstrap,” it read.
He’d taken my name. Even Marcus had never done that, and I hadn’t taken his name either when we married.
With Fraser, I’d never asked, but he’d offered, somehow knowing I needed to publish under my own name.
He wasn’t attached to his, he’d said, and so he’d taken mine.
This man would always put me first, and that took my breath away.
I said nothing for a moment. Couldn’t. The wind wasn’t strong, but my eyes stung anyway.
Fraser stepped up beside me, his voice quieter now. “I asked Macallister to help. He carved the plank. I just…” He gestured vaguely. “I wanted something waiting when we came home.”
Our home.
I turned to him, throat thick. “How d-do you always know what I n-need before I do?”
He looked sheepish. “I listen.”
“I love you,” I said because I needed to say it again, needed him to hear it again.
“I love you too. More than I thought I ever would again.”
The front door creaked as we stepped inside, and it felt exactly like it always had, except everything had changed.
Fraser toed off his boots while I hung my jacket on the peg, and in the stillness that followed, I felt the quiet rearrange itself.
This was no longer my house. It hadn’t been for months, really. Now it was ours.
He hung up his coat beside mine, the sleeves brushing like they’d been waiting to meet.
I watched him move through the space with the ease of someone who belonged there—topping off the kettle with practiced hands, adjusting the throw blanket on the couch, pulling two mugs down from the shelf with the absent grace of muscle memory.
It still undid me sometimes. How gently he fit into my life without trying to reshape it.
When he turned and caught me watching him, he didn’t flinch or ask. He opened his arms, and I stepped into them. We stood like that for a long time in the red-gold light of the living room lamp, hearts aligned in a rhythm only we could hear.
“Are you tired?” he asked, whispering into my hair.
“No,” I said. “N-not even close.”
“Good.” He pulled back to kiss me. “Because I have plans.”
“For the honeymoon I t-told you we’re not t-taking?” I teased.
He kissed the corner of my mouth. “We’re already on it.”
I snorted. “You can’t d-declare that everyday life is our honeymoon. That’s n-not how it works.”
“Sure, I can,” he said. “We live in a cottage with mismatched mugs, rain-soaked windows, and a bed that groans when we kiss too hard. What else do we need?”
Nothing. We needed nothing.
We made love in our creaky bed, with cushions under Fraser’s knee so he could stretch out on top of me like we both loved. In the shower afterward, we bravely attempted a second round, but neither of us could finish, so we called it a draw and laughed it off.
Later, we carried slices of Brianna’s wedding cake into the living room, curled onto the couch under a throw blanket, and read from a book of Mary Oliver poems we both had dog-eared before ever meeting.
Time stretched like molasses. The rain came again, soft and steady. Somewhere around midnight, I dozed off, curled against Fraser’s side, his heartbeat under my cheek like punctuation.
And I dreamed of a lifetime of ordinary days with this man. Of coffee in the morning, his flannel shirt against my cheek, the sound of his cane on the floor, our toothbrushes touching on the shelf.
I dreamed of a lifetime of them. Day by day.
Thank you for reading Befriending the Bear. Have you read the other amazing books in the Forestville Silver Foxes series? Start with book one, Renovating the Model , today!
If you’re looking for more books with stuttering representation, please check out my book, Coming Out on Top , which features a stuttering gentle giant named Mac.