Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 88143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“Don’t think I didn’t see you kissing my sister,” Matthew says, and I shake my head. “It’s going to be a good year,” he says, shaking my hand. I stand there in the middle of them both holding up the jersey in my hand. Matthew finishes the speech, and I was giving him one more minute before walking off the stage. Zara was sitting with our mothers on her side as she silently cried, and it was killing me.
I shake Doug’s hand and then make my way to Zara who gets up and throws herself in my arms. One of her hands goes to my cheek. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” I smile at her and wipe away a tear with one of my thumbs. “I wanted to surprise you.”
“You did all this for me?” she asks me, and I still shake my head.
“I did this for us,” I tell her. “For me and for you and for Lilo and Stitch and our kids.”
“Our kids?” she asks me, and I take the second biggest leap of faith today as I get down on one knee in the middle of everyone, my family and her family.
Zoe is the first one to gasp, and then all eyes are on me. “Zara Stone, check your Twitter account,” I tell her, and she looks around.
“Someone get me a phone,” she shouts. My sister steps forward wearing a smile and hands over her phone. No doubt planning what I told her to do. Zara looks down at the phone and sobs.
@ZaraStone will you be willing to change your name to @ZaraRichards.
“What started off as a simple tweet became the best thing to ever happen to me,” I tell her and see that our mothers are hugging. “I don’t just want you to be my girlfriend. I want you to be my wife, and I want you to be the mother of my children. I want to commit the rest of my life to making you happy.” I grab the black box that I also picked up today after I signed the contract. “Will you be my wife?”
“Yes,” she says, nodding her head. The whole crowd cheers, and when I look over, I see we are on the screens. She comes to me and grabs my face in her hands. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
So there in the middle of five hundred people, she agrees to be my wife. I slip the five-carat princess cut rose gold diamond ring on her finger and seal it with a kiss and not just a little peck. I seal it so everyone knows she’s mine.
“Dude, that is still my sister,” Matthew says behind me, and we both laugh.
“This has to be the craziest thing that has ever happened to me,” she says.
“Beautiful, this is just the beginning of our crazy!”
Epilogue
Zara
“You need to leave,” I whisper when he finally collapses on top of me. “Everyone is going to be here soon, and it’s bad luck for you to be here.”
“It’s bad luck for me not to start the day with you in my arms,” he says into my neck, and I turn in his arms. “Why did we agree to this big ass wedding anyway?”
“Um, because your mother said she would kill you, and then my father seconded that motion.” I remind him of the conversation we had at Christmastime after we moved into our own home.
When he accepted the offer with the team, the first thing he wanted was to buy us our own home. With the flooding at Zoe’s place and her living with us, it became his mission. But he just didn’t have one mission, he wanted to be close to my family. Now the only thing wrong with that is there were no houses for sale. Until one day there was, and it wasn’t anywhere near what we were looking for, but he didn’t care that this house had ten rooms, or that he would need a golf cart to make it from one side of the yard to the other.
I wanted to contribute to the house, but that got me a long side look from him, and no matter how much I complained about it to everyone, they just shrugged. “It’s my duty to take care and provide for you,” he kept saying.
My mother would offer advice, and it sucked. “Pick your battles.” I didn’t really know what she meant, but I knew that eventually I would have to find a battle to fight.
Zara’s Closet was also the biggest talk of the town. After I dressed seven of the A-listers at the last Oscars, designers were beating down my door to work with me. I had more work than I had time, and even though I was in demand, I still made my own schedule. I traveled when I knew that Evan would be on the road, and when he was home, so was I. I knew that I didn’t want us to be apart any more than we needed to be, so the decision was made for me. Or was it really?