“What’s that?” he demanded. The flirting tone he’d been using all night disappeared. He didn’t want to tease me anymore.
The wine signified too much.
“I thought maybe you wanted to stay for a bit? After I get the kids to bed?”
He pushed back from the small table and jumped to his feet. His long legs ate up the space between us in a few elongated strides. He picked up the bottle and read the label before setting it back on the counter.
“When did you get this?”
“Emma watched the kids for me today. I had something I needed to do.”
“What was that?”
I looked up into his dark eyes and held his gaze with a confidence I had never felt around him before. “I went to talk to Grady. I had a few things to tell him.”
“Like?”
I smiled, “Don’t you want to wait until after I get the kids down? We could have privacy. It might be easier.”
His hand reached out to grip my waist; his other steadied himself on the counter. “Don’t make me wait, Liz. I don’t want to wait.”
My heart thumped frantically in my chest and my skin tingled where he touched me. “I told him that I fell in love with you. I asked him for his forgiveness, but then I realized I didn’t need it. You were right, Ben. I can love two men. I can love Grady without holding back anything from you. And I can love you without betraying him. I don’t want to be neighbors anymore. I don’t even want to be friends. I just want to love you. For as long as you’ll let me.”
He lunged for me, crushing me to his chest and wrapping his arms around me. “I want that too,” he breathed against my neck.
The kids erupted with grotesque sounds, not pleased with our public display of affection at all. He pulled back to give them some peace, but kept his hands on my back, holding onto me.
“You want to do this?” his eyebrows raised and his expression grew serious again. “You’re willing to fight for this? It’s not going to be easy.”
“I know it’s not,” I told him. “But I love you, Ben. I can’t stay away from you anymore. I don’t want to. I wondered for a long time how I would fit you into my life, into our life. I know now that you are my life… as much as the kids and Grady. You brought me back to life. You gave us a future to look forward to again. I already lost one man that I loved. I cannot lose another.”
His palm cupped my jaw and his thumb brushed over my cheek bone. “I love you, Elizabeth Carlson. As difficult and aggravating as you may be, I love you more than I have loved anything or anyone. I am with you in this. I am with you forever.”
He leaned down and kissed me on the lips, slow and leisurely. The kids broke out with more disapproval and raucous laughter. I pulled away from him reluctantly to give them all the evil eye.
He pressed his forehead to my temple and whispered, “Let’s get these kids to bed. We have more making up to do.”
I made a needy sound I wasn’t proud of and that was maybe highly inappropriate in front of my children.
“Mommy, do we get to keep Ben now that you love him again?”
I looked down at Lucy and felt my heart fill up to the top with love and affection for all of the people in this room. I hadn’t been this filled with love in so very long. My grief and pain took a backseat to these beautiful feelings brimming at the top.
“Yes, Luce, we get to keep Ben. Ben might just keep us too.” He squeezed my side to assure me that he would. I looked over at Blake, noticing that he had stayed silent. “Blake, how are you doing, Buddy? You up for this.”
His cheeks heated with embarrassment, but he lifted his chin and gave us a brave look. “You’re happy again, Mom. Ben can stay for as long as you want him to.”
Ben chuckled, “That is a good answer from a good man. I might be able to learn a thing or two from you, kid.”
Ben helped me take the kids upstairs and get them ready for bed. He stayed the night with me, in my bed. It took some mental adjusting, but… I didn’t vomit.
And we didn’t have sex.
He held me through the night and I adapted to a body beside me. A body that wasn’t Grady’s. I knew this would take time. I was okay with that. And Ben was okay with that.
It would be another year before he asked me to marry him. He would wait until the kids were asleep and then one warm fall night, he would lead me to my backyard where the Adirondack chairs still sat, and he would kneel before me and ask me to be his wife.
I would be ready by then. I would still cry and later that night I would cry again and say goodbye to Grady again, but I would also say yes to Ben.
By then he would know my parents and my in-laws and my sister so well that they would be his family too. And I would know his parents and my kids would know his parents and learn to call them Grandma and Grandpa.
Actually, they would call Sharon and Mark their grandparents long before they called Ben dad.
We would get married in my backyard in a small wedding with only our closest friends and family. I would move Grady’s ring to a necklace that I never took off and Ben would place his diamond on my ring finger as my husband.
I would trade my married name for Ben’s name and I would be proud to be Mrs. Tyler, even though my kids all kept Carlson.
We would put Ben’s house for sale soon after that because he had always planned to move in with us.
Like he said, my house had always felt like a home to him. His house was just a house.
We decided to keep his bed though.
It was important that we didn’t keep everything exactly the way it was in my house.
Ben would be the father that watched my kids grow up and the husband that would grow old with me. He would help me drop my children off at college and walk my daughters down the aisle when they got married. He would be the one that held my grandchildren and watched as my already big family expanded. He would be my second chance at love and happiness and a sequel to my happily ever after.
But most importantly, he would always be the man that gave me life after death.
The man that helped me through the five stages of grief.