Chapter 295
Chapter 288. Two Years
SEDONA
Two years have a way of folding itself into something smaller in memory than it actually was.
Clam
I was thirty-one now, fully remitted according to Dr. Mitchell’s last three consecutive screenings, ranked sixty-third on the circuit, which Maria insisted on telling people was “remarkable, given the gap” in a tone that suggested she still found my entire comeback slightly miraculous despite having engineered most of it herself.
Nick was eight.
The house Dante had built for us sat on five wooded acres twenty minutes outside Seattle proper, close enough that my mother could “drop by” with a frequency that had become, in practice, almost daily, and far enough that the house genuinely felt like ours rather than an extension of the Preston property.
Dante had designed it with the specific care he brought to everything, a kitchen large enough for my mother’s eventual takeover during holidays.
I stood in the kitchen most mornings now, coffee in hand, looking out at a garden that had become, slowly and without ceremony, simply home.
Nick called Dante “Dad” now.
It had happened gradually. No single dramatic moment. No formal announcement. Just the slow accumulation of an ordinary word slipping naturally into place, across hundreds of unremarkable days.
I remembered the first time I noticed it. Nearly a year ago. Nick is calling out from the garden. Dad, come look at this. Completely unselfconscious. The word arrived as easily as if it had always belonged there.
Dante went very still when he heard it. I watched him from the kitchen window. Watched him kneel down beside Nick to look at whatever bird had prompted the call. He trembled but held himself. A fake smile played on his lips. After sometime he told me later, that night, lying in the dark, that it was the single best moment of his entire life.
I believed him completely.
Drew called me “Mum” now too, with the same gradual, unceremonious arrival, somewhere in the second year, the word had simply started showing up in his careful, precise sentences, no fanfare attached, just the natural evolution of a relationship that had been quietly, steadily, becoming exactly that for years before the language finally caught up.
Two boys. Two parents who had become, through patience and presence rather than any single grand gesture, simply parents to both of them, the careful original architecture of biological versus step entirely beside the point now in the daily texture of actual life.
The wedding planning, when it finally began in earnest, became its own small chaos, because there were, in fact, two weddings being discussed simultaneously, mine and Dante’s, and Cameron and Lucian’s, the latter finally moving forward after Lake’s notebook had spent the better part of a year accumulating
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Two Years
tentative outlines” nobody had the heart to discourage.
Clem
We sat around my mother’s kitchen table on a Sunday afternoon, the whole sprawling assembly of us, trying to sort logistics that had become genuinely complicated given how thoroughly our two families had already merged in practice.
“We could do a joint venue search, Lucian suggested.
“Save everyone the trouble of touring the same properties twice p>
“Absolutely not,” my mother said, with the specific firmness she brought to matters of ceremony. “Two separate, equally important celebrations. I will not have either wedding feel like an afterthought to the other p>
“She’s not wrong,” Cameron said. “Though I appreciate the efficiency argument p>
Lake, now six and somehow even more thorough than he’d been at four, produced an actual binder, color-coded, tabbed, the specific evolution of the notebook he’d started years ago into something genuinely impressive.
“I’ve been tracking venue options for both weddings,” he announced, sliding it across the table. “Cross-referenced by date availability, garden access, and proximity to good bird habitat, since Nick and Drew specifically requested that consideration p>
“You did this,” I said, flipping through pages of careful research that no six-year-old should reasonably have produced.
“I had help,” Lake admitted. “Ms. Okafor showed me how to make a spreadsheet p>
“Your kindergarten teacher taught you spreadsheets,” Lucian said, with visible disbelief.
“First grade now,” Lake corrected, with dignity. “And yes p>
Nick and Drew, settled comfortably at the end of the table, were deep in their own negotiation, the “important jobs” Nick had requested years ago finally being formalized into something they’d apparently been planning for months without telling anyone.
“We want to do the rings,” Nick announced. “Both weddings. We’ve been practicing p>
“Practicing what?” I asked.
Drew paced with a pillow in his hands without dropping anything. He wore an unreadable expression, but somehow, one can deduce something.
“We’ve been using a tennis ball as a stand-in. It is harder than it looked.
“How’s the success rate?” Dante asked, fighting a smile.
“Improving,” Nick said. “We dropped it less this week than last week p>
I sat back and watched the whole noisy, overlapping scene unfold around the table, two weddings being planned simultaneously, a binder produced by a six-year-old, two boys practicing ring-bearing with a tennis ball, my mother already three drafts deep into a guest list she insisted needed “careful curation” despite the guest list essentially being everyone already sitting in this room.
m
< Two Years
Claum
Gameron caught my eye from across the table. He looked, I thought, exactly like a man who had spent two years patiently building toward this exact unremarkable, chaotic, joyful Sunday afternoon, and had finally, completely arrived.
“Two years,” I said to him, quietly, just between us, while the rest of the table continued its happy chaos.
“Two years,” he agreed.
“Did you think we’d get here? Honestly, back at the beginning of all of it p>
He considered this carefully, the way he considered everything.
“I hoped,” he said. “I worked toward it every single day without letting myself fully believe it until it actually arrived. But sitting here now, watching all of this,” he gestured at the table, the binder, the boys negotiating ring-bearing logistics, Lucian and my mother debating venue dates, “I don’t think I could have imagined it would look exactly like this. It’s better than what I imagined. Louder, Messier. More completely, ridiculously full p>
“It is,” I agreed.
I looked around the table one more time, my whole sprawling, hard-won family, gathered loud and overlapping and completely, permanently theirs.
Two years.
It had taken everything to get here. It had been, entirely worth it.
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Asking Luganofficially
Asking Lucian Officially
Chapter 289: Asking Lucian, Officially
CAMERON
Clum
I had asked Lucian a number of critical questions six months ago. It wasn’t a kind of quiet kitchen conversation from years back. But I asked the critical questions on bended knee in our own garden. Lake was conspicuously absent for the first time in his life when something significant was happening. I’d finally learned my lesson about the importance of advance notice.
We hadn’t made it formal yet. Not in the sense that mattered to my mother. No announcement. No venue. No date. We’d simply continued living the life we’d already built. The engagement was settling into our days in the same unhurried way everything between us always had. No rush attached, because we’d already proven, across years of patient Tuesdays, that we didn’t need urgency to know what we had was real.
But my mother had started, gently and then less gently, to ask questions.
“You’re engaged,” she said, at Sunday dinner, in the tone of a woman who had waited as long as she reasonably could before raising the subject directly. “For six months now. I would like, at some point, to know if there’s an actual plan attached to that fact p>
“There’s a plan forming,” I said.
“Forming,” my mother repeated, with the specific scepticism she reserved for answers that weren’t actually answers.
Lucian, beside me, was failing to suppress a smile. “We’ve discussed it,” he offered, unhelpfully.
“Discussing isn’t planning,” my mother said. We made it official that evening. We sat the whole family down after dinner. The specific formal announcement my mother had clearly been waiting for.
“We’re getting married in October,” I remarked.
“Outdoor venue, somewhere close enough that everyone can be involved easily. We haven’t picked the exact location yet, but we wanted you all to know it’s actually happening, with an actual date, before Mum staged an intervention p>
r
“I would not have staged an intervention,” my mother said. “I would have simply continued asking, with increasing frequency, until you produced a date p>
“That’s an intervention,” my father said, mildly.
Lake, now six and apparently incapable of letting any family decision proceed without his formal input, produced his binder again, the same one from Sedona and Dante’s planning session, now expanded with an entirely new tab.
“I have venue recommendations,” he announced. “Three options, ranked by garden quality and bird habitat proximity, since I assume that’s still a priority p>
“It’s always a priority,” Lucian said. Patient warmth. The kind he’d perfected across years of managing his son’s enthusiasm.
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Asking Lugfficially
“Option one is the botanical garden downtown,” bake continued, flipping pages with great seriousness.
Pros: excellent flowers, good photo opportunities. Cons: limited bird diversity, mostly pigeons p>
“Noted,” I said.
Claes
“Option two is a vineyard forty minutes out. Pros: very scenic, good cake vendor relationships, according to my research. Cons: far for Grandma Jennifer, who has expressed concerns about driving distances for events requiring multiple trips p>
My mother nodded approvingly. “He’s not wrong about my concerns p>
“Option three,” Lake said, with visible triumph, “is our backyard. Pros: free, close, excellent bird habitat that Drew and Nick have already catalogued extensively. Cons: smaller capacity, may require a tent p>
“The backyard,” I said, looking at Lucian.
“The backyard,” he agreed, smiling.
“That’s my recommendation too,” Lake said, satisfied, closing the binder with ceremony. “I also have cake opinions, if you want them p>
“Go ahead,” Lucian said.
“Chocolate, with a fruit layer, but not too much fruit because Drew is suspicious of overly fruity cake,” Lake said, with the gravity of someone delivering essential intelligence.
“I’ve consulted him already p>
“You’ve consulted everyone about everything,” I said.
“It’s important to gather data,” Lake said, unbothered.
He hesitated then. The binder still in his lap. Something shifted in his expression that told me the next question mattered more than the venue logistics had.
“Can I object to the guest list? If there’s someone I don’t think should come p>
“Who were you thinking of objecting to?” I asked. Careful. Genuinely curious now.
“Nobody in particular, I just want to know if I’m allowed to, theoretically. For future reference p>
“You’re not actually allowed to veto guests. But you can always tell us if you’re worried about something specific, and we’ll listen p>
“That’s basically the same thing,” Lake said, with the specific confidence of someone who had decided, regardless of the technical rules, that his opinion would functionally carry weight anyway.
“It’s really not,” I said, though I was smiling.
“We’ll see,” Lake said, mysteriously, and returned his attention to the binder.
Later, after the house had quieted and Lake had finally been convinced to go to bed, despite several attempts to extend the planning session, Lucian and I sat together on the back porch. We looked out at the exact patch of garden Lake had recommended for the ceremony.
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Asking Lupuffierally
“He’s not wrong,” Lucian said. “It’s a good spot p>
“It’s a perfect spot,” I said. “Though I never expected our six-year-old to be the one to identify it via a spreadsheet p>
Lucian was quiet for a moment. Something thoughtful in his expression.
Claim
“Do you remember,” he said, “the first time you came to the flat? Before any of this. Before I’d let myself believe any of this was possible p>
“I remember,” I said.
“I used to lie awake some nights,” he said, “doing the math on how much I had to lose if I let myself want this and you turned out to be temporary. The job, Lake’s stability, everything I’d built to keep him safe.” He looked at me. “I never imagined I’d be sitting here, years later, watching our son produce a venue spreadsheet for our own wedding. I don’t think I let myself imagine that far ahead. It felt too dangerous to hope for p>
“I’m glad you let yourself get here anyway,” I said. “Even without letting yourself imagine it in advance p>
“Me too,” he said. “I think about it sometimes, how close I came to keeping you at a careful professional distance forever, just to protect myself and Lake from the risk. I’m grateful, every day, that I didn’t manage to actually do that p>
I took his hand, the garden quiet around us, the same patch of grass where Lake had insisted the ceremony belonged, where I would, in October, finally make this entire patient, hard-won thing completely official.
“Two years, from the first Tuesday,” I said. “To this p>
“Yes,” Lucian agreed. “I’d do every single one of them again p>
We sat together in the quiet garden, the house settled behind us, Lake’s binder still sitting on the kitchen table with its careful, color-coded plans for a wedding that was, finally, genuinely, actually happening.
October.
I intended to be ready for every single piece of it, including, apparently, whatever guest list objections Lake still planned to lodge despite having no actual authority to do so.
୮
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
a/n: i can’t believe i forgot there had to be two proposals, and i wanted cameron and lake to have some explicit life, but i did not want to get some readers angry who might not like it, so pg 13 all through, but my next book, i am giving trigger warnings in the first page.
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Florence
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.