Good people did exist. The Reese family was proof.
And it stirred emotions inside me that left my mind reeling.
“You’re still refusing to swim?” Porter asked as he sauntered over to me. His bathing suit—thankfully a pair of board shorts and not a pink Speedo—was dripping and his wet hair hung down over his forehead.
“Did you see the size of the fish Travis caught a minute ago? I’m concerned its cousin the Loch Ness monster might show up for revenge at any minute.”
He chuckled and sank onto the grassy bank beside me. “You doing okay over here?”
“Yeah. Today was fun.”
He looped his arms though mine and folded our hands together, resting them on his thigh. “I told you it would be.”
Hannah’s laughter rang through the air as Tanner ducked under the water and pretended to be a shark.
“Your family is crazy. I see where you get it from.”
He scooted closer until our thighs were touching. “Is that why you’re over here, looking like you are on the verge of a panic attack?”
I tore my gaze off my son, who was casting a line into the water at the other end of the pond. “What?”
“Come on. Don’t bullshit me. You’ve been happy all day, and for the last thirty minutes, you’ve been sitting over here alone, staring up at the sky like you’re waiting for it to fall.”
Wow. That was…surprisingly accurate.
Though I wasn’t waiting for the sky to fall, I’d been trying to make heads or tails of how perfect it felt.
Everything was too right. Too good. Too temporary.
I didn’t get those things in life. Yet, right then, I had them all.
And it scared the hell out of me.
At my silence, his eyes flashed dark. “You want to talk about it?”
“I can’t decide if we’re too real or not real enough,” I whispered.
His body locked up tight. “Confessional?”
“No,” I said. “Not here. Not tonight. Let’s just talk.”
He cleared his throat and stared at me. “Then I’m going to tell you, first and foremost, there is no such thing as too real or not real enough. There’s just real. And there’s just us.”
Guilt slashed through me. “I don’t mean for it to sound like that. I wasn’t talking about us. Well, not completely, anyway. It’s… Today was so great it almost made me uncomfortable. I’m starting to think I don’t know how to be happy. Is that, like, normal in a situation like this?”
“Charlotte, there is nothing normal about us.”
“Right. I know that. But are you happy?”
“Today? Unquestionably.”
“See, for me, it’s like I go through these spurts where I’m really happy, and then I realize I’m happy and it scares me because I’m well versed in how quickly that can be taken away.”
“I get it, baby. We’ve lived through a lot of sour over the years. But this is the sweet. Remember when I told you I used to come here every year and get in the water, trying to figure out how to let go?”
My chest tightened, but not a single word made it to my tongue, so I nodded.
He pressed a kiss to my forehead, allowing his lips to linger for several beats. “One dip in that pond, knowing you were sitting on the bank, my boy down on the dock, fishing with his grandpa, my daughter playing with her grandmother and her uncle, and I didn’t just figure out how to let go—I felt the pain disappear.”
“See, rational thought tells me that it’s impossible to find the energy to feed the pain and hate when you’re surrounded by so much goodness and love. And yet I can’t seem to relax. No matter how good it is. It’s like I’ve been programmed for the darkness and I’m lost in the light.”
“Sweetheart,” he purred in understanding.
I looked at the water. “I love this life. I’ve never been happier than I have been in the last week. I close my eyes at night, knowing when I open them you’re still going to be there. I still stress and worry about losing Travis, but it’s manageable with you. I, as a general rule, don’t like people.”
He chuckled, but I wasn’t joking.
“I don’t, Porter. But I love you. And I love that he loves you. And then, today, you bring me to meet your family.” I paused when the emotion of my confession became too much. But I refused to cry. Not anymore. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you calling me your girlfriend all day.” I laughed and it luckily kept the tears at bay. “But this all scares me so much.” I peered up into his blue eyes and asked the question I didn’t actually want to know the answer to. “I need to know the truth. I’ve been doing it for so long. I don’t even know what’s real anymore. Are we pretending here?”
He grinned. “Are you pretending?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so or you aren’t?”
“I…uh…” I stammered.
He chuckled. “Charlotte, are you happy?”
I swallowed hard. “Right this second? Yes. But what about—”
He pinched my lips closed with his thumb and forefinger. “Stop with the buts and what-ifs. If you always expect to get kicked in the stomach, that’s all you’re ever going to get. There are going to be ups and downs, sweetheart. But you can’t let the lows color the highs. You had a good day today, right?”
“Yesh,” I mumbled around his fingers.
That damn sexy grin of his grew exponentially. “Good! Then enjoy it. Today, we have it all. And we fucking earned every second of that happiness.” One of his hands went under my legs and the other around my back.
I draped my arm over his neck, assuming he was dragging me onto his lap.
He didn’t.
He rose to his feet with me in his arms.
“You have to embrace the good times or the bad times will always overwhelm you. When you look back on this day, a year from now, I don’t want you to remember the last thirty minutes of fear. I want you to remember laughing and living in the light with people who love you.” A smirk tipped the side of his mouth. “And maybe swimming too.”
My eyes flashed wide as he took a step toward the pond.
“Porter, don’t!” I demanded, squirming in his arms. “There are fish in that pond.”
“They aren’t piranhas though.” He laughed, and that sexy rat bastard just kept walking.
“Please!” I squealed.
“This is as real as life gets,” he said, stopping at the edge.
“If you throw me in that water, you are going to wish you were pretending,” I snapped, but then I laughed when he started swinging me toward the pond. “Stop! I don’t have a change of clothes.” I cackled, clinging to his neck.
“How do you feel right now, Charlotte?”
“Like I’m going to kill you.”
He laughed. “But you aren’t scared, are you?”
“For your safety? Yes,” I shot back.
“A year from now, you’ll remember this.”
“From the inside of a prison cell!”
“Say you love me,” he ordered.
I glanced up and saw that everyone had stopped what they were doing and were now watching us as they smiled. “I love you!” I whisper-yelled. “Now, put me down.”
He jerked like he was going to throw me. “Louder.”
“Porter!” I hissed. “People are staring at us.” I squeaked when he faked me out again.
“Louder.”
“Fine. I love you!” I yelled, tucking my face in his neck as my cheeks flashed hot with embarrassment.
“Good. Then you should have no problem forgiving me for this.”
“No!” I yelled, but it was too late.
He jumped into the water with me securely held against his chest.
Laughing underwater, I tried desperately not to think of the possibility of a fish brushing my leg and, instead, focused on Porter.
Maybe he was right. We’d been through hell. If ever there were two people who deserved a happily-ever-after, it was us. Happiness was a state of mind, not something you had to hold on to for fear you’d never get it back.