Key in hand, she steps back, looking at me before dropping her gaze and unlocking the chest. She lifts the lid and when she looks inside she gasps. Her hand flies to her mouth and she starts to cry.
Well, fuck. Is that good or bad? I can’t fucking tell. She’s not looking at me. I can read her eyes, but she’s not giving them to me and she’s not moving.
I stand there, hands curled into fists in my pockets, and wait.
Finally, with only a few minutes of light left, she lifts her hand and picks up the ring and the note inside.
Tell me to ask you.
She looks up, her eyes full of tears.
“Ask me,” she says softly.
I walk to her and drop to my knees in the sand. I take the ring from her and hold both of her hands in mine.
“Summer, you’re more than I ever dreamed I’d find in someone. I swear I fell in love with you at first sight because nothing felt right without you since. When you walked back into my life, I knew I’d do anything to make you mine. Now that you are, I know that I want nothing more than to love you for the rest of your life. Summer Alison Stephens, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” I ask. No nerves. No fear. Only love and hope.
She nods. “I will.”
I grin a grin so big it hurts. After I slip the ring on her left ring finger, she drops to her knees and launches herself at me, knocking me over backwards.
She looks into my eyes with so much love and happiness, I feel it inside me.
“I love you so much, Jace,” she whispers against my lips.
“I love you more, Summer.”
And then she kisses me. I’m talking kisses me.
“I don’t care if I get sand in unkind places,” she murmurs as she stands and strips off her pants and panties.
She unzips my jeans and slides them down just enough to pull out my cock. She wastes no time climbing on top and taking all of me deep.
“Summer,” I murmur. “You feel so fucking good.”
“Jace,” she moans as she starts to move, lifting and lowering herself. My hands slide underneath her shirt to cup her breasts.
“Mmm,” she hums, starting to lift her shirt.
“Don’t take it off. You’re already showing more than I ever want anyone to see of you but me,” I tell her.
She rolls her eyes. “Well, then hang on because I’m going to fuck you hard and rough.”
“Baby, you can fuck me any way you want,” I tell her.
“Oh yeah?” she asks with a lift of a brow.
“Never. I correct my previous statement.”
She laughs, then leans forward to kiss me and then it’s a race to the finish line. Christ. She moves in all the ways she knows I like and I groan.
“I’m going to embarrass myself and come so fucking fast, darlin’.”
“Do it. I want you to come hard and fast, then take me in the house and get me naked so we can start over.”
“Summer,” I groan. “Your pussy is so wet and hot. You’re always so ready for me.” She clenches, squeezing my dick, spiking my pleasure by a thousand. “God damn.” I grab her hips and move her faster, harder, and I lift to pump into her harder and deeper.
“Oh yes, Jace,” she cries out.
“Fuck yeah. I want to hear you scream my name when you come all over my cock, baby. I want the world to know you’re mine.”
Thrust after thrust I get closer, too close. I flip her over onto her back, lift her knees over my elbows, and fuck her like a mad man. So hard and rough.
“I can’t get deep enough,” I mutter.
“Harder,” she cries out. “Oh yes, just like that.”
“Son of a bitch, you’re beautiful,” I growl.
“Jace,” she breathes. “I’m going to come.”
Her pussy starts to spasm around my cock and she screams out my name.
“Jace! Yes, oh God, Jace!”
“Fuck!” I shout then come with a roar. It’s mind-blowing pleasure, white-hot ecstasy shooting from my cock, pouring into her pussy, a vision I see in my mind. “Yes, fuck,” I groan as I keep coming and when the last bit of pleasure flows, I roll us to our sides.
We’re both panting. It’s dark outside now except for the moonlight. It’s perfect.
“Wow,” she murmurs.
“Yeah,” I pant out. “I love that I can take you bare like this, darlin’. Every time I come inside you I picture my cum painting your pretty pussy white.”
“That’s hot,” she replies and I chuckle.
“You’re hot.”
“Mmm, let’s go in and shower the sand out of my ass,” she jokes.
I chuckle. “I have another surprise for you.”
“Do you now?”
“Mhmm. I’ve got everything we need.”
She stills. I lift a brow and she smirks.
“Yeah?” she asks.
“Oh yeah,” I answer. I pick her up, her legs wrap around my waist and head into the house.
“Is this what you’ve been waiting for?” she asks as we undress and step into the shower.
I shrug. “Maybe. I just don’t want to share any of it with anyone. We needed total privacy.”
“I can see that.”
We wash up and she throws on a robe. I throw on my boxer briefs and we head to the kitchen for something to drink.
“Wine?” I ask.
She scrunches her nose. “Not with what we’re going to do.”
I nod. “There’s some root beer, regular and diet?”
“Oh, that sounds good. Diet please.”
I hand her one and get a regular for myself.
“Let’s do it,” she says. “It’s going to be soooo good. I’ve never had it this way.”
I wink. “It’s not just going to be good, it’s going to be fucking amazing.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Well, you can watch, and help add the stuff.”
“Sounds good.”
She sits on a stool in the kitchen and I gather the things we’re going to need. I had most of it set out. I need to get the ice.
“Come stand next to me, darlin’. Lean over the counter. I want to get a good look at my ring on your finger sparkling in the light as we try something new,” I tell her with a wink.
“This ring, Jace. My God.”
“I’m glad you like it. I would have picked wrong. Sera, Lucy, and Megs came with me. I was going to choose a square cut. They vetoed that before we even entered the store.”
“Square is beautiful too, but this. It’s perfect. I’ve always dreamed of a pear shaped diamond. I never imagined the decadent wraparound you have with it. You’re just… my dream come true, Jace,” she whispers.
“And you’re mine,” I tell her, adding stuff to the mix.
“That looks so good,” she murmurs.
“I’m a vanilla kind of guy, so we’ll mix it up a bit.”
“Strawberries or raspberries?”
“Pick one. Either is good for me.”
She picks the strawberries.
“Toss ‘em in. Don’t forget the ice,” I tell her, pushing the button on the ice cream maker. “I like that we don’t have to do it all by hand anymore. Arm gets fucking tired.”
“I bet. And this gives us time to make out,” she tells me.
“Only ten minutes.”
“Enough time to kiss. Then we eat our homemade ice cream that we have to share with no one and go to bed and eat some off each other,” Summer purrs.
“Deal. Now kiss me, woman.”
“I’ll happily kiss you every day for the rest of my life.”
I smile at her and kiss the tip of her nose.
“That’s the plan, darlin’, that’s the plan.”
33
Sydney
My Dearest Jace,
You just asked me to marry you. I know it’s not for the reasons it would have been all those years ago, but I still feel like the luckiest girl in the world. I get to marry the man who’d been
my best friend, my lover, my everything, and now he’s going to be my husband.
Thank you for giving me this. I never expected this. I’m trying not to cry because it gives me a headache now, but it’s difficult. You are the same wonderful man I loved all those years ago.
You walked in here like this was an every day thing, like I wasn’t lying here dying and the daughter you didn’t know about wasn’t sitting right there. You didn’t flinch. I love you for that.
I hope you don’t hate me. I know I’ve said that before in my letters, but I really, really mean it—especially now that I’ve seen you face-to-face. I know what I took from you and I couldn’t be any sorrier for it.
I can see it in your eyes. You already love her and you just met her. She’s the mirror image of you.
Thank you for loving me as well as you did. Thank you for loving me enough now to make this easy for me. Thank you for loving our daughter and accepting her without question. Thank you for marrying me. Thank you for everything you’re ever going to do for Kadence. Just… thank you, Jace. With all my heart, thank you.
I’ll talk to you soon… this time I can’t promise.
I will always love you,
Sydney
34
Jace
Hi Syd,
I know you’ll likely never see this but I needed to write it anyway.
I’m so fucking sorry you had to go through that, Syd. It killed me inside knowing you suffered so much and I wasn’t there to help you. Cancer is a motherfucker. I got that phrase from one of my friends, Ben Kingston. His girl battled the C word too. She won.
Christ, how I wish you’d have won. It sounds like you fought a tough battle. I hate knowing you hurt like that. You didn’t deserve a single second of it. Never, ever think you did. You’re one of the best people I have ever known or ever will know.
I won’t lie to you. I was so angry with you when I found out you lied to me. I wanted to howl in outrage. How could you do that? Why would you, when you knew how much I loved you? God damn it, she’s my kid too!
Then I read your letters. It doesn’t make up for it, nothing ever can or will make up for the time I missed with Kadi, but I understand the ‘why’ better.
Brace yourself here, you may never hear this from me again. You were right. Yeah, you read that right. I don’t know if we’d have made it either in the long run. We were two dumb kids who fell in love but had no idea what the world was about. In this crazy, mixed up world, love isn’t enough. We would have tried. God, how we would have tried, and in the end it would have killed us both that we failed. We never would’ve been the same because we would have given everything we had and it wouldn’t have been enough. We never would have been able to truly love someone again. I don’t think Kadi would have come out of it unscathed either.
God, how I loved you, Sydney. You were my everything. My breath. My heartbeat. My happiness. When I lost you, I lost me, too. I did things I’m not proud of and that I regret with every breath I take, but like you mentioned, we can’t change the past so regrets are foolish.
I hope you found happiness in the years we were apart. I know you don’t think of her this way, but Kadi was a burden. Not a bad one, but a burden nonetheless. I know that was all on you and you worked so hard to keep a roof over your heads and food on the table. I hope the assholes posing as my parents at least gave you enough to make your life easier. Yeah, I know all about it. I know they’ve known for a long time, too. I’m done with them, Syd. You’d tell me to try to understand and give them a chance, but I can’t. When I went to see them, they had no regrets. Not one. And that’s something I can’t ever forgive. They kept my child from me. They made decisions for me. They paid you to stay away.
I don’t blame you, Syd. Please don’t think that. I know you might have taken the money, but I also know you found me. You gave me our daughter. For that I will be so fucking thankful for every day of my life.
I wish I’d been there for you. Not just Kadi. It sounds like the pregnancy and delivery weren’t easy. I’d have helped. I would have taken care of you, but since I couldn’t, I’m glad you found the help you needed at the time.
Karen was there when you stopped breathing. She helped me find my footing and I’m going to try to help her find hers as well. I’m going to see what she wants for her future and help her get that—not just by tossing money her way, but really helping her make it a reality. She deserves that and so much more for being so good to my girls. I’ll always think of you as my girls.
I haven’t met Mrs. Newbury, but she sounds like an incredible lady. I’m glad you had her. I’m so fucking sorry she lost her husband. I know she’s hurting, so I’ll talk to Karen about her as well. Maybe I can help them both at the same time.
I met someone, Syd. She’s the other half of me. I knew it the minute my eyes found her across the arena we’d been playing in. You’d love her. She has such a big heart and genuinely cares about people—even those she doesn’t know. She wants to help make the world a better place for kids and anyone whose life is less than perfect. I’ve never met anyone like that.
She put herself in danger for these two kids she knew were being abused. God, Syd. The bruises, not to mention the wounds. I want so much to beat the hell out of that fucker, but she wants him to pay for what he did. She wants him to go to jail. She wants him to get what’s coming to him. I think what she means by that is his cellmate Bubba teaching him what it’s like to be a punching bag—and then some.
She loves our girl. I mean she really loves her. And she loves me. She loves us completely and we love her back.
I’m not telling you this to hurt you. I want you to know that we’ll be okay, Syd. Kadi would be better if you were here, but this is all we can do now. I know you’re around, too. Funny trick, blowing my hair so it stood straight up. I’m glad you’ll be here for Kadi. She’s always going to need you. Always.
Thank you for my daughter, Sydney. Thank you for loving me enough to know what was best for me, even when I didn’t. Thank you for loving our daughter and raising her to be so perfect. Thank you for everything: past, present, and future. You’ll always be one of the biggest parts of me. I still love you every day. That’s never going to change.
One day we’ll meet again. Until then…
Love you always,
Your husband, Jace
35
Summer
Dear Sydney,
You don’t know me, but I wish we’d gotten that chance.
Kadence is a wonderful girl. You have done such a magnificent job raising her, and you did it all by yourself. I would be lying if I said I understood all your reasons for doing so, but it’s only you who has to.
I know Jace would have been there for you through everything. He would have loved you something fierce. He’d have taken care of you and that baby girl and never batted an eyelash.
But you know all that—and I think that’s why you left. You didn’t want him to give up everything for you. You wanted him to live the life he wanted, but sometimes those decisions should be up to the person who needs to make them. I’m sorry if that’s bitchy, but honestly, Jace deserved better than this. He should have been there for his baby’s first cry, first tooth, first cold.
I’m sorry. It’s not my place to say those things, no matter how much I love him. And I do. I love him. I hope you’re okay with that. I hope you’re okay with me being around Kadi. I won’t ever expect her to call me mom. That’s you. I would never want to take your place or replace your memory. You’re her mom and I vow to make sure she remembers you as best as she can. We’ll talk about you every day, share the photos and videos. Sydney, your daughter will always know who you are. This I promise you.
I will do my best by them both. I hope you’d be supportive of this, I think you would. You seem like a selfless person who wants nothing but the world to be happy. I admire you so much for that.
Thank you for loving Jace and Kadi. I’ll make sure they keep loving you
in return.
All my best,
Summer Stephens
36
Kadence
Mommy!
Daddy’s gonna marry Summer. She’s going to be my stepmom. I think that’s fun. I wish you were here to hug. I miss you lots and lots.
Sometimes I smell the lady with flowers. Are you with her? If you come visit me, Mommy, can you puff me like you did Daddy? It will make me happy to know you came to visit—even if I can’t see you.
I’m taking dance with Mr. Weaver and Nicole is helping me too. They aren’t as nice as you, but you always told me there is no room for nice in dance. I want to dance like you when I’m bigger. I want to dance on a stage in front of lots of people and make them smile and clap.
I’m the BFD tour dancer. That makes me giggle. Xander told me I’m the best dancer ever and I have to dance for them. I said yes but Daddy said only for some songs. I think some of the songs have lots of naughty words. At least that’s what I overheard Lucy saying. I think they don’t want to have to pay the swear jars anymore. There are lots of them around the house and they’re full of dollar bills. That makes me giggle too.
I’m not scared of Jesse anymore. I’m used to his growling now. Lucy told me it’s his way of teasing, which is silly. It took me awhile to not jump when he yelled, but now I just roll my eyes and tell Noodles to chew on his shoe. Noodles does and then Jesse gives me a look that used to make me scared, but now it makes me laugh. Then he calls me “sassy girl”, picks me up, and tickles me.
I like my home, Mommy. My new family is nice, but I miss you. I miss you laughing with me reading books and watching TV. I miss you making my mac and cheese. I miss you kissing me night-night. I miss you hugging me just ‘cause.