Not a surprise.
But he’d gotten better with age.
I looked to the other photo and it was a picture of Merry in a big, comfortable-looking chair, looking up at the camera, smiling beautifully, a wrapped bundle of baby held tight against his chest.
Merry and his niece, Cecelia.
Proud uncle.
I knew that too.
I moved across the front of the TV to get to the pictures on the other side.
This was a triple-frame spread across the shelf, the only thing in the space.
Center frame, a formal picture of Rocky and Tanner at their wedding, surrounded by Merry in his groomsman tux, Dave, Vera, Devin, and Tanner’s sons with his first wife, Jasper and Tripp.
Right frame, Tanner and Merry, arms around each other’s shoulders, far less formally posed but still taken by the wedding photographer in the same location as the middle picture.
The left frame, Merry in his groomsman tux and Rocky in her wedding dress. He held her in both arms; she’d wrapped hers around him. Her cheek was to his shoulder, their eyes aimed at the camera. Both of them were smiling, but Rocky looked like she was also crying.
I knew Rocky put that spread together for her brother. It was likely she’d framed the other pictures for him too.
And it shook me that all he had, all that was him in his pad, was his father, his sister, his niece, and his sister’s extended family.
I was so deep in this thought, it surprised me to feel Merry’s heat at my back, his hand touch my waist, and his lips at my ear, saying, “Best day of my life.”
I stared at the photo, letting those words move through me, wanting to believe. Wanting to believe that was true and not that he felt that way about the day he’d married Mia.
“Finally, one Merrick had the guts to hang on to happy,” he finished.
I turned, and he lifted his head as he took that opportunity to trail his hand along my waist so it lay light on the small of my back.
“It’s cool your sister has that, Merry,” I told him, and his lips curled up.
“More than cool for her, babe.”
“Yeah, but best day of your life?” I pushed carefully.
He looked beyond me to the frame, then back to me as his left hand hit the other side of my waist.
“Lucky for me, I’m not dead yet.”
I lifted my hands and rested them on his chest, curling my lips up as well.
“Right about now, that’s lucky for me too.”
His grin got bigger but only for a moment before it faded.
“You okay, sweetheart?”
He was reading me.
I drew in a big breath before I shared, “Ethan’s at Meems’s. Weekday sleepover.”
His left hand slid to my back as his right one put pressure on.
My voice was weird, small, and trembling, as I admitted, “I’m givin’ up a morning. She’s gettin’ him to school.”
“You’re givin’ up a morning with your kid…for me.” He said that, and the way he said it, I knew he knew how big that was for me.
Then again, I’d already taught him that lesson the hard way.
“So I got my brown-eyed girl all night,” he murmured, his eyes falling to my mouth.
I slid a hand up to his neck and his eyes came back to mine.
With the movement of my hand, I meant to delay. I meant to get his attention. I meant to do this so I could say something.
But when he looked at me after the night he’d given me, and he’d already given me so much that I’d never had—taking me to a swish restaurant, telling me I looked phenomenal, kissing my hand in his truck, laying things out for me honestly, making me laugh, laughing with me—I couldn’t say what I needed to say. I couldn’t tell him how much this meant to me. I couldn’t tell him I was the kind of girl who’d never dreamed because, even when I was little, I always knew I was the kind of girl who’d be stupid to dream.
I could never tell him that standing right there in his arms, in his personality-less living room, it was a dream I’d never dared to dream come true.
I couldn’t tell him that.
So I said, “Thanks for dinner.”
I watched something move through his blue eyes. Something beautiful. Something I instantly wanted the power to rewind life so I could hit pause and stare at it for as long as I pleased.
“You’re welcome, Cherie,” he whispered.
I stared in his eyes.
God, did he know?
Did he know that he was the dream come true a girl like me would never dare to dream?
I kept staring into his eyes, trying to see if that was the case, as I slid my hand up so I could stroke his jaw with my thumb.
He let me.
Then he shared he wanted other things.
“Wanna kiss you, honey.”
“Then kiss me, Merry.”
“No.”
I felt my head give a slight twitch.
“No?” I asked.
“No,” he repeated. “Need you to get this, Cher. I wanna kiss you. But right now, I wanna kiss you because you’re standin’ in my arms, lookin’ up at me the way you’re lookin’ up at me. I definitely wanna kiss the girl who loves to make me laugh. And I wanna kiss the girl who put that dress on for me. I also wanna kiss you because after I kiss you, I’m gonna take you to my bed and I’m gonna fuck you. But you need to know, in this instant, I wanna kiss you because you’re the girl you are right now, the way you are right now, lookin’ up at me.”
Oh God.
I wasn’t hiding anything.
He knew.
“Merry,” I whispered.
He bent his head and slid his nose down the side of mine, his lips a breath away, his blue eyes becoming my whole world.