Page 112 of Emmett
“Eric!” His wife laughs from somewhere in the room.
“Oh, Christ.”
With a wide smile and a wink, Davis shuts the door in my face and I hear the lock engage, followed by a muffled shriek and a fit of giggles on the other side of the door.
I laugh with a shake of my head as I make my way back to my family. Handing the girls their stockings, I tell them to go wild and I drop down onto the couch next to Nash, resting a hand on his thigh as he drapes his arm around my shoulders.
Davis and Sophia rejoin us as the girls finish tearing through their stockings and opening everything inside of them. He drops down onto his wife’s lap, forcing a loud ‘oof!’out of her, and she tries to shove him off. “Get off of me, giant!” She cackles.
“Y’all hear somethin’?”
As he stretches his arms out and leans back against her in spite of her flailing limbs, Sophia shouts, “I can’t breathe!”
Leaning forward to grab his eggnog from the table, Nash raises his glass. “Before we get started, I would like to propose…” he looks at me with a smirk, “a toast. To patchwork families,” he says with a nod to Ro, who meets him with a smile as she raises her glass. His eyes move to mine as he continues. “And to second chances, however we get them.”
“I’ll absolutely drink to that,” Dad says.
As everyone raises their glasses for a drink, I lean in and press my lips against Nash’s ear. “And to the men who save us until we’re able to save ourselves,” I whisper.
“I love you,” he tells me just before pressing his lips to mine.
A tiny hand pats my leg as my not-so-baby sister approaches. “Iwant toast,” she whines, and I can’t help but let out a hard laugh.
“You can have toast, jellybean,” I tell her, holding her tiny hand. “I’ll make you some after presents.”
As much as he didn’t want to, I convinced Nash to lessen the amount of staff around the house; not all of them, because I think it might have shocked his system and killed him to doeverythingon his own, but we now do our own shopping and cook our own meals – including toasting our own damn bread. I’ve even gotten Nash to change the bedding once or twice since I moved in.
It doesn’t take long for the adults to exchange gifts among ourselves, but the girls take considerably longer. By the time they’ve finished, the living room is a disaster area, covered in gift wrap, tissue paper and discarded ribbon – and I’m so thankful that I’m here to see it.
“Oh wait,” Nash says, standing as he steps toward the tree, “there’s another in here.”
I glance at my best friend, who squeezes her fists together in excitement, trying not to let herself smile, and I stand to move closer to my boyfriend.
I attempted again two years ago, and my prizes for surviving were thirty-two stitches, a shitload of EMDR and talk therapy, and a ninety-day inpatient stay at a treatment center two hours outside of the city. Nash visited me twice each week and accepted any call that I was allowed to maketo him; he dropped anything and everything just to be able to talk to me for our allotted ten minutes. When I was able to go home, he met me at the facility with three dozen black roses and my entire family in tow. That was when I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him; but I also knew that I wanted to be sure that I was okay before I ever acted on it.
I didn’t want to promise him forever if I wasn’t able to deliver it.
As Nash moves for the gift in front of him, I glance to my dad, who throws me a nod and a wink in silent encouragement, tightening his grip around his wife. Taking a steadying breath, I drop to one knee, holding a green wooden box in front of me. I open it as Nash turns to face me, and surprise etches into his features.
“You don’t like rings,” I tell him, gesturing toward the watch inside.
Nash breaks out into roaring laughter, opening the velvet-lined box in his own hand as he joins me on the ground, taking a knee himself. “Neither do you.”
“It’s the fact that youbothasked me for help picking them out!” Rowan cackles, and Davis joins her, reaching over to slap her on the leg in his own laughter.
“Are you kidding me? That better be two yeses,” Ava all but demands.
“It’s a yes from me.”
Nash smiles, his hazel eyes glued to mine. “It’s been a yes from me for years.”
He takes off his watch so that I can slide the new one into place, and he slips the bracelet from his box onto my wrist. Our lips fuse in a kiss so deep that I almost forget my family issitting five feet away from us, watching, until we’re forced away from each other by their whoops and hollers.
Rowan, Ava and Sophia point and laugh at each other as they each wipe at their eyes, and Dad pulls me into a crushing hug.
“I am incredibly proud of you,” he tells me with a kiss to the side of my head that makes me scrunch up my face.
Nodding toward his wife, I quietly ask him, “So are you guysactuallydone after this one, or…?”