“Did you talk to her about it?”
I nodded, glancing over at her again. She was holding her belly and shifting her weight from side to side. A sign that she was getting tired and needed to get off her feet. Not exactly ready to share the fact that I had a panic attack in front of my wife—he thought those stopped when I turned fifteen—I took another swig of my beer and turned back to my dad and answered, “Yeah, we talked it out. Turns out communicating can actually fix things.”
He shook his head, a small, teasing smile growing. “I’m proud of you, boy.”
And this time, I felt like he truly meant it. All those years of building up my career, becoming a better player, making myself and my horses the best we could be…it never seemed to be exactly what he wanted to see in his son. While my delinquent self throughout my teenage years didn’t care about what he wanted for me, I cared now. I was the only family he had left. His legacy lay on my shoulders. Lenz deserved to feel proud of the son he raised.
“Thank you.” I held out my bottle to toast with him again. “I am proud, too.”
***
Later that night, after we locked the door after the last guests left, and our fathers were tucked away in the downstairs bedrooms, I lifted Maggie beneath her legs and carried her, bridal-style, all the way up to our bedroom. She giggled as I gently sat her on the bed, her arms still wrapped around my neck. I began to kneel to the floor in front of her, but before Icould, she moved her hands to cup my face, holding me in the position I wanted to stay in forever. How vastly different tonight was from the last would never fail to baffle me, but I could only thank Maggie for that. This woman was perfect.
Her shining emerald eyes stared into mine, and the world closed in on us in a different way. I didn’t feel like I was running out of oxygen. I didn’t feel like my sight was blurring. I didn’t hear distant echoes of my own breath. In fact, I never wanted anything to puncture this fantasy bubble. I wanted this to close in on me for the rest of my life.
Everything but us felt so unimportant. How could I panic when I had this astounding woman who would fight tooth and nail for my well-being? All my life, I wanted something beyond my imagination to make me feel whole. Like I wasn’t an empty shell of a man with a successful career and no shred of sustainable happiness. I filled the void with an endless list of women, working my ass off to become an unbeatable player, networking with everyone in the polo world to keep a steady stream of income, but it never fulfilled me in the way I needed it to. Every day ended with my head on a pillow, staring at the ceiling wondering what the fuck I was doing with my life.
Maggiefoundme. After all the years we spent as little kids running around our dads’ horse trailers, turning to strangers as we got older, becoming each other’s first everything—kiss, time, child…marriage—we had turned our lives intothis.Together.
I wanted this forever. Settling into her gaze, I brushed a thumb beneath her eye. Where I knew another tear was bound to fall. And it did.
“Jack…I don’t even know what to say to you after tonight.” Her eyes shimmered, and I braced myself for the impending tears. “It was so perfect. No, it was more than perfect. I couldn’t even imagine what you had planned for tonight. A surprise weddingin place of the one we never had? It was out of a fairytale,” her voice wavered.
I couldn’t help the pride that swelled in my chest.Imade her feel like this.
“I just-” she sobbed. “I can’t believe you did all this. I swore I would never get married, and you just went and made me fall in love with you anyway.”
I let a moment of silence ring between us. She promised she would never get married.And she married me anyway.
I didn’t think there was anything more powerful than that.
“And Lina was in on the whole thing?”
Brushing tears away as quickly as they fell, I nodded. “Everyone was.”
Maggie threw her head back in a tearful laugh. “God.She really had me. I was so busy trying to help her with Felix, I didn’t even realize what was happening right under my nose.”
“Felix?” I asked. I caught him staring at Lina more than a few times throughout the party, but that would be a story for another day. Tonight was Maggie’s.
“Yeah. Apparently, something is going on there,” she waved a hand. Her tears were clearing up, so I took the opportunity to take her hand in mine.
“Do you like your new rings?”
She inspected them as I twisted the two rings around her finger. “I love them. I didn’t know wedding bands could have this many diamonds on them.”
I smiled. The amount of money I spent was trivial compared to the way she looked at it. The way she looked atme. “Did you count how many diamonds are on it?”
She shook her head in confusion, then looked down to count them. “Eight.”
“Eight.”
“What is eight?”
“Eight months ago. When I saw you again for the first time. When you came to work for me.” I placed a hand on our baby. “What led to making Anya.”
My wife looked at me in disbelief. The ring between us glimmered in the soft glow of the bedroom, but I couldn’t bring myself to look anywhere but her eyes.
“You are so beautiful, Mags.”
