Things Remembered (Accidentally On Purpose Companion Novel #3) (34 page)

Everyone applauded. Finished with my second speech of the day, I started to walk away to rejoin the party, but Grant stepped up beside me and cleared his throat. I looked at him curiously before I realized that the entire room had fallen silent, except the smaller children whining or babbling. I looked around, noting that nearly everyone was either grinning or trying not to. The women—Emmy in particular—vibrated with muted excitement.

My chest grew tight with anxiety as I looked back to Grant.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked slowly.

He smirked at me but did not answer me. Instead, he spoke to our captive audience.

“I first met Mayson when she was just a twelve-year-old smartass kid,” he said, followed by some chuckles. “I saw her here and there over time, but one day I saw her many years later, and it seemed to me that she had grown up overnight. She had her problems, but I saw through all that. I saw a fighting spirit in her. I saw a fire in her that I had never seen in anyone before, and to this day, I still haven’t seen in anyone else. She was funny and intelligent and intriguing. She was still smartass,
and
she was
gorgeous
. There are children in the room, and her mother, so I’m not going to tell you the impure thoughts I had when I looked at her.”

I rolled my eyes as others laughed. When Grant continued, he spoke more solemnly.

“Mayson was all those things, but she was also tragic. Maybe a lot of you who knew her back then lost any hope that she could ever get better. Maybe some of you had to walk away for your own sanity and protection. But I was drawn to her, because even though she was struggling with addiction and barely able to tolerate herself, she always wanted more, and she tried very hard and more often than any of us knows. She was always trying to fix herself, to be a better person. Maybe it made me a tragic person, too, but it was a culmination of all the good things and all the bad things that made me fall in love with her.”

Grant paused and looked at the floor for a moment as he tried to gather his words. I could feel eyes on us but I remained focused on the man beside me.

“I left,” he said, so faintly that I was sure no one had heard him. He lifted his head and said it loud, his deep voice cracking through the air like a whip. “I left. After my sister Sharice died from a drug overdose on the same day that Mayson almost died, I decided that I couldn’t stay and watch her die, too. To this day, I still don’t know if I made the right decision. I can’t regret it because I did marry and have two incredible children. When I caught up with Mayson again, you probably won’t be surprised to know that she was ready to push me into traffic. She was not happy to see me and she had no problem telling me. Miraculously, she gave me a second chance, even after all the years that we had been apart.”

Finally, Grant looked at me. The emotion on his face and in his eyes ran as deep as the waters of the Congo.

“Mayson Mariah Grayne, I love you,” he said.

It was as if those three words were a signal because in the next second music began to play. As one, my friends, family, and colleagues began to sing.

Too startled to think clearly, I didn’t recognize the song until Luke spun Emmy to the center of the room, singing the first two verses of “All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles. Emmy sang the next two verses, smiling lovingly up at her husband. He looked at her as if she were the only other person in the room.

Tabitha and Leo were next, gazing into each other’s eyes with electric zinging between them. Then for the chorus, the entire room sang out. I looked from singing face to singing face, astounded and laughing with a touch of hysteria.

Emmet and Donya floated onto the floor, their voices carrying through the entire room as they sang the next verses. His fingers trailed over her face, and at the end of their part, he kissed her rapturously.

As they sang, the party guests closed in on us, forming a loose circle. They clapped in time to the music, singing enthusiastically. Even my mother was singing and smiling at me.

I looked at Grant, my astonishment still present. I still had no idea what the hell was happening, but that question in my mind was answered in the next instant when Grant dropped to one knee.

My mouth—which couldn’t have possibly opened any further—stretched so wide that it hurt my face. I watched, frozen, as he reached into his suit jacket pocket and produced a black velvet box. He flipped the box open with his thumb and held it up to me like a sacrificial offering.

The timing was perfect because the singing and music came to a soft end only seconds after Grant opened the ring box. When he began to speak, the room was once again quiet. Even the kids were relatively quiet.

“Mayson, I tried to come up with a beautiful proposal speech, but I don’t have anything eloquent to say. I can be straightforward and tell you the truth of my heart. I love you, and Natalie and Alex love you. You have made us very happy, and we want you with us always. Stay with us, Mayson, and please be my wife.”

Something inside my chest burst and bloomed. Sobbing and laughing, I nodded my head eagerly.

“Yes,” I cried. “Yes!”

Grant looked so relieved that I laughed again, but I began to sob loud and beautifully ugly again when he slid the platinum band over my finger.

Everyone cheered and applauded. I heard women sniffing and crying, but I didn’t see who, because I only had eyes for Grant.

He stood up, took me into his arms and kissed me. Our friends and family began to sing again. As I lost myself in the kiss of the man I just agreed to marry, I knew that what they sang was true. Love
was
all I needed.

Epilogue

“Are your eyes closed?”

“Yes,” Grant and I said together.

“Mayson, you’re peeking!” Natalie admonished.

“I am not peeking. I was blinking. My eyes are closed. Come on! Hurry up before I fall asleep from boredom.”

“Such a smartass,” Grant said under his breath.

Smiling, I playfully bumped him with my shoulder.

In front of us, Natalie, Alex, and Taylor shuffled around and whispered, but I could only catch a few words. Even behind my closed eyes, I could tell that the kitchen lights had been turned off. Just when I was about to complain again, Natalie spoke.

“Okay. On the count of three,” she said. “One.”

“Three,” Alex said, his tone dry.

“Alex!” Nat shrieked, incensed.

I opened my eyes, and Grant must have opened his at the same time because we simultaneously made sounds of pleasant surprise.

“Happy Anniversary!” the trio called out.

Natalie’s arms were outstretched, presenting us with the large cake Taylor held in her hands. It had white frosting with, “Happy Anniversary” written in red. Flames of three red and white striped candles flickered in the semi-darkness.

“This is really nice, guys,” Grant said, emotion woven into his voice.

“Aww,” I crooned, getting to my feet. “Thank you, guys!”

“You have to blow out the candles!” Natalie said excitably, bouncing on her toes.

Grant put his arm around my waist and pulled me against him and we blew out the candles together.

“Happy Anniversary, Repo Man,” I said, wrapping my arms around him. I tilted my head back to look into his handsome face.

“Happy Anniversary, Baby Girl,” he responded, caressing my cheek with his thumb.

We met halfway for a kiss, ignoring Alex’s gagging and Natalie crying out, “That’s disgusting!”

“There are children present,” Taylor called out when we were still kissing several moments later.

Reluctantly, we stopped and pulled apart so that we could enjoy our anniversary cake and some ice cream with the kids. Well, with the kids and Taylor. She wasn’t really a kid anymore. At twenty years old, she was a young woman with her own life.

A few months before the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Chrysalis Center, Taylor had been accepted into the New York City Ballet Company. She officially danced for a paycheck, and not around a pole. Not that there was anything wrong with dancing around a pole, but I was glad that she wasn’t that kind of dancer. Taylor had real talent, and unlike me, she
wanted
to be a ballerina. She wanted that life, and she had it.

We had grown close over the years, despite the fact that she had moved farther away. She visited as often as she could, and many times Grant, the kids, and I joined her in New York for a weekend or during the holidays. As she got older, our sibling relationship did grow stronger, but more importantly, Taylor became my friend.

Natalie
adored
Taylor and emulated her as much as she could. Of course, that meant that she, too, wanted to be a ballerina. Naturally, I had my reservations in the beginning, considering all I had gone through as a kid—which in retrospect…wasn't really…that terrible…I will never,
ever
admit that to my mom. Anyway, I had my reservations, but Grant told me that I wasn’t my mom, and he wasn’t my dad. If he ever saw me becoming a dance mom, he would “handle” me. I wasn’t sure what that meant, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know.

So, twice a week Nat had dance class. From the start, she really seemed to like it, so I kept my thoughts to myself. I didn’t want to be like my mom by forcing her to do it, but I would still have been no different from my mom had I forced my own ideals upon her. Natalie had to find her own way, discover for herself what she liked and didn’t like. Grant and I guided and parented her with the other essential elements of life, but whether or not she wanted to do ballet or stay at home and watch cartoons was up to her.

As I predicted, Alex loved being hugged by girls. Last year, he hit puberty full force. He shot up almost six inches, his face lost the baby fat and his voice deepened seemingly overnight. He apparently skipped over the whole awkward boy part and jumped straight into good looking, budding man-boy.

Alex still enjoyed building things with his hands and he was still a
Star Wars
fanatic, but he spent a lot of time on himself. He was meticulous with his grooming, almost to the point of annoyance. He spent more time than I did getting ready in the mornings. It worked, because when we were out with him, the girls crawled out of the cracks in the sidewalks. I had seen too many of the little hussies press their mini boobs against him while they hugged him, and more than once he’d come home with a lipstick mark on his cheek.

I didn’t like it! Grant didn’t like it, either. We’d had to lay down some ground rules to keep him out of trouble, and Grant had many talks with him about how to treat girls and how to be responsible. He didn’t want Alex to take advantage of his popularity with the fairer sex. Furthermore, we didn’t want him to lose focus in school, and teenage hussies sure did have the ability to sidetrack a guy.

I hadn’t wanted to be anyone’s mother, but after being with Natalie and Alex for four years, I couldn’t imagine my life without them. I loved them as if they had been mine all along. They still called me Mayson when they were speaking to me, but when speaking
of
me, they referred to me as their mom. The first time I’d heard it was on Natalie’s first day of kindergarten, a week before the ribbon cutting ceremony.

“Who are these people with you?” her teacher had asked Natalie after introducing herself.

“My daddy Gwant, and my mom Mayson,” Nat had said without pause.

Admittedly, I’d almost cried.

My relationship with my own mom was…okay. Even years later, it was hard for me to accept any genuine affection she showed me, or any kind of compliments that she gave me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want it because I did, but my automatic defensive reaction was to repel her. I tried very hard to get past it. I even went as far as going to therapy with her twice a month. The therapy helped us work through many of our problems and we began to understand each other better. We weren’t very close, and I didn’t know if we ever would be, but I loved her, and I knew that she loved me. I knew that we would keep trying.

“I will give you your gift later,” Grant whispered in my ear, pulling me out of a woolgathering daze.

Alex, Nat, and Taylor were chatting away about something else. I had no idea what they were talking about.

“My gift, huh?” I gave him a sardonic smile.

He laughed, making his luscious mouth open wide and flash his white teeth. I loved watching him smile and laugh.

“I didn’t mean
that
, but I want that, too,” he murmured and nipped my ear before anyone could see. “But I have something else for you.”

“I thought we agreed not to buy each other anything,” I whispered back to him.

He shrugged, and planted a quick kiss on the corner of my mouth.

“I don’t care if you didn’t get me anything, but I really wanted to do this for you. I’ll give it to you later tonight.”

“Mayson, do you want more cake?” Nat asked.

I pushed my empty plate across the table. “Like you even have to ask.”

After Taylor had taken Nat with her to my mom’s for the rest of the weekend, and Alex left to spend the night with one of his friend’s, I left Grant to his own devices and went to soak in the garden tub for a while. Grant added it to the bathroom as an engagement gift more than three years ago. At Sterling Corp., I was seated for most of the day, but at the Chrysalis Center, I was all over the place, all day long. Some days, my muscles were achy and only a soak in the tub could cure it. But tonight I didn’t need to soak in the tub because I was sore. I wanted to soak in some sexy scented bath salts because, like my husband, I also had an anniversary gift to give.

We didn’t wait too long after our big engagement to get married. Many people wanted us to do the whole traditional wedding thing with a ceremony performed in front of guests at a beautiful venue, and a reception with linen table cloths, real china, and music and dancing. Donya wanted to design a wedding gown for me and bridesmaids’ dresses and tuxes for the guys. After only a couple weeks of constant phone calls, text messages, and emails from Emmy, Donya, and my mom and their overly excited wedding planning, I started to get stressed out. There was so much to do, so many details that couldn’t be overlooked. It was too much for me, and we were only getting started.

The only person who didn’t nag me about wedding stuff was Tabitha. She and Leo hadn’t had a big ceremony, even though they had been planning one in the beginning. I don’t know what changed their minds, but they ran off to Las Vegas without a peep to anyone and quietly got married. It was days before the rest of us knew anything about it.

“Leo said ‘we’re doing this now’” she had told me one day over Skype. “He didn’t want to wait another day. He said we had wasted enough time. We left for Vegas the next morning.”

“Do you ever regret not having an actual ceremony with your family and friends in attendance?” I had asked her.

She had smiled warmly, with a reminiscent look on her face. There wasn’t even an ounce of regret in her features.

“No, I don’t regret it. The two people that mattered most were there, and that was us. My only regret is that I waited so long to marry him. You have to do what’s right for you and Grant, Mayson. Don’t have a big ceremony to benefit others. Your surprise engagement party was fantastic, and everyone you loved and cared for was in that room. If that’s enough for you and Grant, it’s enough for me, and it will have to be enough for everyone else.”

When I had told Grant that I didn’t want to have a wedding, he was right there with me.

“I just want to marry you,” he’d said. “I don’t give a damn about who sees it happen and who doesn’t.”

We wed a little more than a week later on a Saturday afternoon. The weather had been mild that day, so the ceremony was performed on the terrace in our home. The only people in attendance were my parents and sister, Alex and Natalie, and Kyle and Lily. I did buy a dress for the occasion, but it was black, not white. Also, unlike a traditional wedding dress, I could wear it again. That evening, we sat around the fire pit, drinking wine and dining on hamburgers and hotdogs that Grant had made on the grill. It had been a perfect day.