“Beck,” she said, her voice breaking. “I can’t believe you did this.”
“It’s really happening, folks,” Mabel whispered into her phone. “Beck and Everly are about to officially become Beverly, and you’re seeing it first right here on Mabel’s Lives.”
Everly choked out a laugh, and I clenched my jaw, closing my eyes as I pressed our foreheads together. “Can I tell her to fuc—”
“Um, some privacy, please, Mabel?” she said, cutting me off.
“Well.” She huffed. “I expect that from him, but from Starlight Cove’s very own sunshine?”
“She’s not Starlight Cove’s sunshine, she’smysunshine,” I said. “And if you don’t get out of here, I’m taking your phone again.”
She pursed her lips and swatted a hand through the air. “Oh, you’re no fun.”
I just raised a brow at her, and she turned around, stalking off and finally giving Everly and me some privacy.
“So itwasn’tmy imagination that everyone was acting so strange.”
My lips twitched, and I shook my head. “They’re definitely not going to win any Oscars, but they were good sports.”
“They were amazing.” She tucked her fingers into the waistband of my jeans and leaned closer, resting her body against mine. “Youare amazing. I’ll never be able to thank you for this.”
“I didn’t do it for the thanks. I did it for you. You work so hard, trying to please everyone else, so I wanted to be selfish for you. That means every penny we raised is yours to do whatever you want with. None of it chains you to Starlight Cove. If you want to up and move back home to Washington and build a business there, you can.”
“You’d…be okay with me leaving?” she asked, apprehension tinged in her voice.
“Fuck no. But I am right now because I already made the decision that I’d go with you.”
“You would?”
“If you said the word, I’d do it in a heartbeat.” I pressed a kiss to her lips. “It doesn’t matter where in the world you are. You’re my home and I’m yours and that’s just how it is.”
She bit her lip, her eyes brimming with that sparkle that’d been missing for so long. “And what if I decide this is where I want to be? What if I want to rebuild in Starlight Cove?”
A smile crept across my lips as I pulled out my phone. I thumbed to the photo of the plans I’d had drawn up and turned it toward her. Her gaze danced over the screen, no doubt taking in the drawn replica of her yellow dream house, just on a larger, two-story scale, complete with white shutters, flower boxes on the windows, and a front porch swing that faced the ocean. Her smile only grew as she took in all the small features I’d made sure were included—like the window over the kitchen sink that’d look out onto the ocean instead of a parking lot, and huge closets unlike the tiny ones at her aunt’s, and enough bedrooms that we could grow into it and stay there the rest of our lives.
“And I might have already bookmarked a plot of land on the resort for such a thing,” I said.
Her eyes brightened, and she threw her arms around my neck, hugging me tight. And I couldn’t do anything but tuck my face into the crook of her neck and breathe her in. My Everly. My sunshine.
“Is that a yes?”
She laughed, her breath ghosting over my neck. “It’s a hell yes.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE
EVERLY
Even in my wildest daydreams,I couldn’t have pictured a scene as perfect as this.
The following evening, Beck and I walked to a part of the resort I ran by every morning—a place I’d felt connected to from the beginning. A place that would be perfect for the clinic and my dream home. Well,ourdream home. It had a beautiful beach and enough foliage to give the illusion of privacy. In reality, we were only a five-minute walk from the diner and another five to the main inn.
In the exact place where our future porch swing would be, I sat in the cradle of Beck’s thighs, his legs bent, arms wrapped around me as we stared out at the ocean in the fading sunlight, the waves lapping softly against the shore.
It was…serenity. Pure and utter perfection. And it was ours.
“So, how long have you been planning this for?” I asked.
He pressed a kiss to my temple and tightened his arms around me. “Not long. I never allowed myself to dream with you, sunshine.”
