“It was.”
She nodded.
“Cricket?”
“Yes?”
“I’m so in love with you.”
A tear escaped her, cascading slowly down the side of her cheek. I ran the back of my index finger up the trail before I licked the tear.
“I’m so in love with you.”
My hand went to my chest right over my heart and my eyes closed. It beat so wildly. Her words floored me.
“Don’t ever leave me again,” she said quietly.
“I couldn’t if I tried,” I said, setting the sculpture near her hand, purposely grazing her fingertips with mine. She gasped softly.
“I’ve been miserable without you,” she said, another tear falling.
I leaned in and kissed that tear away and her breath hitched.
“I’ve been practically catatonic without you,” I admitted.
That earned me her clever smile and I almost fell backward.
“Then what are you waiting for?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” I breathed, rushing her in that moment.
She wrapped her arms around my neck and I picked her up off the wall. She locked her legs around my waist and I kissed her like our lives depended on it. That same drugging, intoxicating sensation rushed over both of us. The one that told us we were made for one another and that the chemistry between us couldn’t be created with any other human.
Cricket Hunt, part owner of my kidneys, the girl who called me on my crap and the girl I was gonna marry someday. She was the girl that could bowl me over with one smile. She was the girl who consumed my thoughts and my heart.
Cricket Hunt was my fate.
Epilogue
Four years later…
“No, no. Her dress is getting dirty. Just pick her up.”
I picked up the little girl with the halo of bright blonde curls and set her on my hip. I made a goofy face and she laughed.
“You’re so funny, Uncle Spencer!” she giggled, her little hand going to her mouth.
“Your Aunt Cricket doesn’t seem to think so,” I whispered conspiratorially.
Cricket rolled her eyes but fought a smile.
“We better hurry or your mama is going to be so mad!”
Her bright green eyes widened and she nodded.
We entered the double doors and I set Savannah down. Cricket bent down and straightened her skirt for her.
“Is this the flower girl?” a random woman asked.
“Uh, yup,” I answered.
She spoke into a handheld device and soon another woman came bustling forward with a ring of flowers for Savannah’s hair. It was set low on the crown of her head.
“This itches.”
“Leave it on and I’ll let you have a giant piece of cake.”
She settled down until she discovered the bell of her dress and then she twirled around.
“Bribery. I like it,” Cricket commented.
I tapped my temple. “Future reference.”
She winked.
Cricket had grown out her hair and it almost reached the small of her back. She curled it, and all I had wanted to do was run my fingers through it since she’d walked out of our bedroom.
My lids felt heavy and I rushed her side. I kissed her throat and moved up to her ear. “Wait until we get home,” I growled.
She gave me her clever smile. “Why go home when we have a perfectly nice car back at the ranch?”
I stood, slack jawed. “Cricket Blackwell, you saucy minx.”
She winked.
“We need all bridesmaids and groomsmen, please,” the woman with the device shouted.
Cricket shoved pulled my arm to where she stood and I resisted, snatching up my wife by the waist and swinging her around. “Spencer,” she laughed. “You are a troublemaker!”
The woman gave us the stink eye, so I placed Cricket back down. We both snorted into our hands.
“We need the maid of honor and the best man in the back here,” she said and we stepped in the far back of the line.
I took the opportunity to pinch Cricket’s butt. She gasped, inviting everyone to turn around and stare at us. I shrugged my shoulders at them like I had no idea what was going on. They turned back around and she hit my arm. “You’re gonna get us in big trouble,” she giggled.
“I hope so.”
“What a thing to say.”
“Time to get serious, people,” the woman announced, but she looked directly at us, inciting another laugh from us. “In a moment, the bride will come through here. The groom’s up front already. Remember, just like rehearsal! This is go time.”
The door to the cry room opened and out came my sister and she was breathtaking. A lace top and dupioni silk skirt. I know this because she and Cricket would tell me about it, like I gave a crap. I was glad they did though. Looking at her in that moment was one of the proudest of my life.
She strode forward and I stopped her before she met our mother’s side.
She smiled wide. “Bridget, you look stunning.”
“Thank you, brother,” she said, kissing my face.
I hugged my mom. “You too, Mama.”
She palmed our cheeks. “I’m so proud. So very proud of both of you.”
Bridget leaned down and kissed her daughter. “You look very beautiful too, Savannah. Very grown up.”
Savannah beamed and bounced on her heels.
I walked back to the end of the line and stood beside my wife. I tucked her dainty hand in my arm and laid my own on top of it.
The piano started and Savannah bounded forward, radiant and bursting with happiness. She gracefully laid lavender down on the stone floor of the church and made it all the way to the end of the aisle, but when she saw Jonah standing at the front, instead of standing to the side like she was told, she ran up to him and held his hand.
The wedding planner tried to get her to come down, but Jonah stayed her with a hand and kept Savannah with him.
The wedding party descended down the aisle couple by couple until it was our turn. I twisted around and winked at my mom and Bridge.
When it was our turn, I strode down the same aisle I had with Cricket just two years before for our own wedding.
“This bring back memories?” she whispered.
“I believe we did it in the car then too,” I whispered back, making her bite her bottom lip and nod.
I shook my head at her. Cheeky.
We reached the end of the aisle and we were forced to separate, which I hated, but I knew I’d be able to look at her through the whole ceremony, so it was my only consolation. The piano stopped and a string quartet began to play “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” as my mom and Bridge started to walk the aisle.
As I watched them, I looked upon my wife, down at my incredible Savannah, then Jonah, Ellie, and Emmett, and I couldn’t help but wonder how I deserved such a preposterously happy and beautiful life. They were my family. They were my everything. I looked over at Cricket and the tears slipping down her face told me she felt the same way.
My mom and Bridge had reached the end of the aisle and I watched my mama give my sister to Jonah. I’d never seen either of them look happier than that moment. The moment where they, all three of them, became an official family. Savannah already called him daddy. She had from her three hundred and sixty-third day and he was. He truly was her father.
During the four years since Savannah’s birth, Bridge had finished high school, gone to college, earned a bachelor’s in agriculture, raised Savannah with my mom and Jonah and had carved herself a niche of perfect life, not because life was perfect, but because it was perfect for them.
Cricket and I had moved to New York briefly after graduating college to pursue Cricket’s sculpting career, which she was hugely successful at, but we missed our family too much and decided to trek back to Montana.
Now, she ran a successful gallery of her own work in town and she shipped all over the world. She was well known in art circles and much sought after.
I was in my second year in law school, studying immigration law, working closely with my friend Sophie Price in Uganda. We were hoping to make a streamlined process to help the orphans there and get them homes here on the American side.
My mom won the Hunt Ranch in the settlement when my dad filed divorce years ago and she gave it back to the Hunts. They returned to their homestead and it was as if they never left. Jonah and the girls stayed back on the new ranch and ran that as a second homestead, a continuation of the Hunt Ranch, if you will.
Some of those profits helped Cricket and me complete school, and it supported us while I finished law school as well. It also helped fund many projects in the Congo, where a friend of Sophie and Ian Aberdeen’s opened a second Masego.
All in all, God had been very good to us. Generosity is one of those traits rarely used, but it is, by far and away, one of the most rewarding gifts one could ever possess. I lived by many things, but my top motto was “give.” Give, and you shall see the incredible rebound of it. The more you give, the more you get. It’s a staggering notion, but the truth nonetheless.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with my wife in our car.
Click.
Boom.