Jordie grinned as he looked back at her, to urge her to come up, but she was already walking around the group, eager to give him his chip. Grinning, she took it from Portia and thanked both of them before looking up at him. Her heart was in her eyes, and it had been since the moment he had asked her to marry him. Had it been easy? No. Would it ever be? Hell no. But they would get through it together.
“Jordie Scott Thomas, you are the most amazing man, inside and out. I know you’ve quoted me a few times, but I want to quote you,” she said, her voice breaking as she gazed up at him. Their sweet baby girl was cuddled in her arms, small and perfect all wrapped in a purple Assassins blanket. “You said that the most amazing thing in life is finding someone who would love you for every flaw, every mistake, and every weakness. And while I do love you for all those things, I also love you for your strength, your tenacity, but most of all, your ability to love. You say I’ve changed your life, Jordie, but really, you’ve changed mine. And I couldn’t be prouder of you than I am at this very moment,” she said, big, wet tears rolling down her face as she slowly reached out, handing him his chip. “You deserve this.”
He took it in his hand and then snaked his arms around her, dropping his lips only a breath away from hers. “But I don’t deserve you.”
“But you got me,” she whispered, her eyes glittering with their future.
“And I won’t ever let you go.”
Because you don’t let go of your leading scorer in overtime—that would be stupid. Jordie Thomas was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid when it came to the game. In the last year, he’d found his life was one big game—sometimes winning, sometimes losing, always fighting for the chance to score, and each day bettering himself in order to win. Everyone needed that one person to help them win.
And Kacey was his MVP.
It’s not a secret that I battle depression, or even that I’ve battled addiction. Mine being in the form of food. Have I won? No. Will I? I hope so.
All I have is my hope and faith that I can be the person I want to be.
I miss my mom—that’s very well-known—and this may be very personal, but this book was my way of giving her her happily ever after. My mother was an alcoholic; she battled depression and her sickness with alcohol until the moment her liver gave out. She was fifty-three years old. I was only twenty-nine. Losing your mother is not an easy thing, I know that. But when my mom lost her mom to cancer back when I was seventeen, she shut down, she stopped being the mother I knew and turned into this person that I didn’t like much. Now, she cleaned up so many times but fell back just as quickly. But no matter what, she loved me. She loved me so hard it hurt and she loved my babies. That’s the stuff I remember. Not the screaming and begging for her to be my mom, not the smashing of bottles on the pavement to keep her from drinking. No, it was that when she looked at me, I knew she loved me. Even at the end, I knew I was my mom’s world.
I just wasn’t enough to clean up for.
And that’s where a lot of my depression and my addiction to food have come into play. I’ve always loved food—I mean, who doesn’t?—but it really was a sickness. Until one day, I looked at myself in the mirror and knew I couldn’t do what my mom did to me. I couldn’t put my husband and children through the pain that I was feeling because I didn’t want to be healthy. I had to stop. And I did, but it’s a battle. A battle that I fight every day and will continue to fight, not only for myself, but for my babies and my husband.