* * *
When I tell my mother and sisters I’ll be moving to Montana, Molly and Celie grab me in a hug. Mama cries but says she’ll happily visit.
“I think you’ll love it out west,” she says to me. “This is the right decision for you, Vannah.”
“And you’ll be leaving the Cannons on top,” Celie says. “Good for you.”
We sit down at the kitchen table so I can fully fill my mother and sisters in on the game in Colorado. Celie’s so excited she’s bouncing up and down in her seat.
“Was Daddy furious afterward?” she asks me.
I nod. “He was upset. But we talked. I feel at peace.”
I excuse myself and go to my bedroom where I pull out the only photograph I have left in my shoebox. I’m in Daddy’s lap, and Mama’s kneeling next to us. They both seem happy. I’m an infant—I can’t be much more than a few months old.
I’m sure Mama had so many dreams for her marriage at the beginning and so many hopes with each new baby. Not every relationship is meant to last, I guess. I tear the photograph cleanly in half so that Mama and Daddy are separate. I rip myself out of Daddy’s lap, and throw all three pieces in the garbage.
When I look back into the shoebox, it’s hard to believe it’s empty.
I finally took back the pieces of my broken heart and made it whole.
The knock comes just as I’m finishing.
I open the door to a dark-haired, dark-eyed man who, in the course of a few months, has completely changed my world.
“I applied for a job at the dance studio in Missoula,” I say to Cam as he steps inside my room and I close the door. “I want to teach.”
“That sounds perfect for you,” he says. “I’m ready too.”
“You’re going to do great with your business.”
“I’ll keep my sales job also for a little longer,” he says. “Don’t worry—we’ll be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”
“I’ll get a second job also.”
His dimple flashes. “Are we seriously going to do this?”
“Yes. I think we are.”
I wrap my arms around Cam and kiss him. He responds to my lips, and we make out like we haven’t seen each other in years.
We end up on the floor in a tangled mess of clothes pulled off in a hurry and underneath the quilt Cam grabbed from my bed at the last moment. He pulls a condom from his pocket and I take it from him and tear open the package. After rolling it on, he slides into me in one motion.
I gasp, so turned on I’m having a hard time muffling my moans. Cam’s hand covers my mouth as I come, and he buries his face into my neck as he murmurs my name.
“Was that what they call a celebratory fuck?” I ask him as we finally come up for air.
His body shakes with laughter.
“I’m not sure,” he says. “I’d call it the best kind of lovemaking.”
I love Cam. I love him so much, and when I look at him lying next to me, I know this is it for me. He’s the only man I ever want to be with. I want to wake up with him every morning and go to sleep with him every night.
“Do you want to get married?” I say abruptly, not able to keep the thoughts inside my head any longer. The words spill out of my mouth, and with them goes any last vestige of protection I’d been holding onto.
Cam takes my face in his hands and looks at me intently. “Yes. I’ve…it’s funny you’re asking me this because you have no idea how much I want that. But do you?”
“You really do?” I rest my chin on his shoulder. “You like me that much?”
