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“Since when did you name your Vespa . . .” His eyes widen. “Wait, Pandora?” I shrug, smiling coyly. “She’s a great heroine. Fiercely independent, vehemently against marriage, but she changes her stance after a sweet, determined man decides he’s going to bend his world, meet her where she’s at, and love her endlessly.” I step up to Viggo, cupping that bristly jaw, my thumb sweeping along his temple. “She has a beautifully creative, agile brain like yours. I loved that about her, too.” Viggo swallows roughly. “Lula . . . you read a romance?” “A historical romance,” I tell him,
“Lu, I don’t know if I can handle this.” “You better figure out a way. I’m hooked. Soon as we get home, I’m heading straight for hist-rom aisle of the store, and you’re going to give me a reading lineup.” Viggo bites his lip. “Seriously?” I nod. “It was beautiful. A little messy. A lot hopeful.” I wiggle my eyebrows. “Very sexy. Got me all horny.”
“I can’t help that I have a very sexy boyfriend I can’t get enough of.” “I’m your boyfriend,” he croons. “You are.” I tip my head, still smiling up at him.
“A fixed-up car for a fixed-up life?” I wrap my arms around his neck, drawing him down. “I’d say I got by far the best end of that deal.” He tugs me close, forehead to forehead. “I didn’t fix up your life,” he whispers. “I didn’t fix up your car,” I whisper back. “We both just used our gifts to help that effort.”
But I’m so glad I’m a writer instead. Now I get to spend my days working right beside you, dreaming up worlds and plans, sharing ideas and hopes. I couldn’t ask for better.”
“Goddamn, he looks good.” I stare at Viggo, drinking him in. “He really does.” Viggo does a double take, noticing my appreciative gaze, realizing my meaning. “Don’t you look at me like that, Clarke. We’re in a public place.” “Not that that’s stopped us before.” He blushes fiercely.
“You know something about meeting the needs of a finicky lady, do you?”
“You’re not so quiet or calm with me, are you?” Tallulah grins. “No, I’m not. You, Viggo Bergman, seem to have a unique gift for firing me up.”
Tallulah paces the house with two cats on her shoulders, and every time she hits the creaky floorboard outside the bathroom, I startle. “Lu, stop pacing already!” I flip the page. “You’re making me jump out of my skin.”
But then I gasp as I turn the page. An epilogue.
“You . . .” I swallow roughly. “You gave them a happy ending, Lu.”
“But they love each other. And they want to love each other well,” she whispers. “So . . . they’ll keep working on it. Keep choosing each other. No secrets, no holding back, just trust.”
“But there’s actually somewhere else I plan on finding my happy ending.” She leans in, her mouth brushing mine. Her eyes glitter, filled with love. “And where is that?” “Right here,” I whisper against our kiss, “with you.”
Springtime in Washington State. Is there anything better? After that spring three years ago, lying in a sea of blue flowers, the man I love wrapped in my arms, I used to think not. But now I know, somehow, every part of life does keep getting better and better because I share it with him— Viggo, my love, my forever.
I stare into his eyes, feel his love, in his gaze holding mine,
“I love you,” he whispers. “I love you, too,” I whisper.
“Goddamn, Lu. You out in open nature. You’re feral.”
“This place is ours, if we want it. Sarah . . . she wants us to have it, to open the next Bergman’s Books.”
my husband,
Viggo stares at me, eyes turning wet. “I’m . . . not your husband, Lu.” “No,” I whisper, fighting my own tears. “But I want you to be.” He exhales roughly, face crumpling. “Lula—” “I love you, Viggo.” I clasp his hand tight, my heart pounding. “I want to believe and dream and hope and build a life with you, from what we already have to even more. I want kids and chaos and joy that always gets the last say, even when sorrow comes. I want that with you, only you. Will you marry me?” He nods frantically, tugging me into his arms, kissing me hard and deep. “God, you have a way with words, Lula.” I
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Knowing that, in some miraculous way, every day that comes, I’ll love him even more—my friend, my partner, my heart. My happily ever after.
I’m floating on a cloud as we walk up the steps to the house, hand in hand, me and my fiancée. My fiancée.
“Happy birthday, Viggo.”
“It’s not every day you get engaged, either. Best birthday present, ever.” She sets her hand over my heart. “I’m so glad you said yes.” “I’m so glad you asked,” I tell her, smiling as I feel the ring in its case, burning a hole in my pocket. I know now when I’ll give it to her. Tomorrow morning, when it’s just the two of us on the back deck, coffee in hand, watching the world wake up, a brand new day, the start of the rest of our lives.
“When do you want to tell them?”
“You kidding? Right now.”
the couch that I know personally does get moved for enthusiastic lovemaking in front of the fire, but is always put back afterward where it belongs.
My dad smiles, deep in conversation with Linnea, who sits on his lap, telling him something that has him fully engrossed. Kids banging and coloring, babies babbling and cooing, being passed from one loving set of hands to another. All of these people who love us, who are overjoyed for us, celebrating the happy ending I was so scared I’d never find.
Linnea bounds toward me, so tall and lanky now, a busy, bright ten-year-old who’s become my childhood literature expert, always helping me find the newest and best books for the store. I open my arms to her, hug her hard, before she darts around me toward her youngest brother, Noah, and lifts him up onto her hip.
LINNIE IS TEN?!!!!
Noah leans toward me, and I take him, cuddling him onto my lap. He sets his head on my shoulder and sighs as I rub his back.
Linnea wraps her arms around Tallulah from behind. “Lula Blue,” Linnea whispers. Tallulah glances back. “Yes, Linnie Loo?” “Got any tissues?” Tallulah frowns. “Why?” “Uncle Viggo’s going to need them.” I glance their way. “What?”
“We’re here,” Dad says, drawing my attention, “because this house is, more than any place, our family’s home.
who we love with all our heart, that even if we lost this place, if we never came here again, this”—he gestures around the table—“would be just as vibrant, just as real.”
“Viggo, you love to love unlike anyone I have ever known. You wrap up everyone you hold in your heart with so much love, even when they don’t know what to do with it, even when that wrapping is a little tight.”
“We are so thankful for the light you brought to our world, thirty years ago, for all the ways you’ve thrown yourself into loving us, reminding us that love isn’t an idea but a living, breathing thing. We are so happy for you that you found someone who believes that, too, who lives love with you.”
“Home is not a place. Home is . . . this.” She glances around the table. “Our hearts, our love, knitting us together, wherever we are. Wherever life takes you, may you know you have a home in our hearts, and may your hearts always be each other’s home.”
“The happiest.”
I wrap my arm around the woman I love and rest my head on hers as we glance at the table, filled with my family,
It could be magic, dancing through the air like fireflies sparkling in the darkness. But I know what it really is, woven between us, as elemental as the breeze, the tides, the sun that will rise and set tomorrow; what’s sustained me, healed me, what gave me this life to share with the woman I adore, this future of ours that I can’t wait to meet— Love.
“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”
