I melt a little more. “I guess I’ll need to come up here then,” I tell him.
“To do what?”
“Think things over.”
“Things like what? Like if you’re still in love with me? If you can be with me? Because that’s crap, Harlow. You do love me. Of course you can be with me. We’re amazing together. You don’t need to think that over.”
I drop my arms from around my knees, straighten my legs, and scoot to the front end of my car. My knees bump his thighs. “No. I don’t need to think about any of that, Jefferson. I’m not an idiot. I know we’re amazing together. I just needed a minute to figure out how to explain this to you and I knew if I walked into your house and saw you on the couch cuddling a couple of cats and you looked up and smiled at me, I would…just fall in love with you all over again and not actually say what I need to say.”
The look on his face is a mix of relief and exasperation and love. I love that look.
“Okay, what do you need to say? But hurry up. I need to kiss you.”
I take a breath. “That I know that you are going to do this same damned thing with all of the people in our lives. Including our children. Maybe especially our children.” I sigh. “You are going to push them, you are going to give them wings. You’re going to tell them about the great big wide world out there that they should experience. You’re going to tell them that there are places other than Sapphire Falls where they can be happy, where they can make a difference, where they can meet other people that will love them and appreciate them.”
I scoot even closer to him, narrowing my eyes. “But I’m warning you, at the same time, I am going to love them so hard that it’s going to be difficult for them to leave. I’m going to help them make so many memories in this town with these people that they’ll weep when they drive away. Our children will be spoiled rotten and I will be their favorite. I don’t believe that you can love someone too much. So our children are going to have a father who is going to encourage them and push them while their mother is going to coddle them and try to keep them at home, and, well, we’re probably going to argue about that.”
I take a deep breath. “And I just figured I needed to explain that to you right now so that we’re both going into this eyes wide open.”
He stands there staring at me for several heartbeats. Then he says, “You’ve been out here thinking about our children.”
I swallow hard. “Of course. And we’re probably going to need to have a few. We’re going to make pretty amazing kids. We probably owe the world more than one or two. But the more we have, the more you and I will probably fight.” I’m watching him just watch me with a look in his eyes that’s hot and full of love. “Of course, the more we have, the better chances I have of one of them staying close,” I add with a small eye roll.
“How many?” he asks.
“How many fights? Hundreds.”
One corner of his mouth tips up. “Kids. How many kids are we going to have?”
My stomach swoops as my heart thumps hard. “Oh. At least four. Maybe five.” I swallow hard again. “Of course, we can adopt some. Or several.”
He takes my face in both hands and says, “God, I love you so much.”
I feel tears stinging my eyes, but I smile. “I know. You’re very smart.”
“You’re going to make my life very difficult, aren’t you?”
My smile grows. “See? Very smart.”
He leans in until our noses touch. “Harlow?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you going to marry me?”
I wrap my arms around his neck. “Yes, Jefferson, I’m going to marry you.”
“Finally,” he mutters. Then he lowers his head to kiss me.
But I pull back.
He lifts a brow.
“And we’re going to live happily ever after. In freaking Sapphire Falls.”
He laughs. “Of course we are. Where else would we possibly go?”
I give him a little growl of frustration. He’s such a pain in the ass. “I’m serious. I’m dying in this town. And if I go first, you have to put my urn on your mantle and keep me there until you die. Then our kids—or Graham and Ginny if our kids all live on other continents and never come home to visit us because their grand life adventures keep them too busy—can bury us together.”
