Coffee With You: Small Town Romance

Chapter Twelve

**Not edited or proofread!**

Drew

Things between Kaecee and her parents had been okay, but a bit awkward. I felt the more they saw Kaecee enjoying her life here, the more they saw just how much they actually held her back when they thought they were helping her.

Kaecee was blooming. Winter had fallen upon us now, snow covering the ground. Even now, it crunched under my boots as I walked up to the barn. Kaecee and I rarely spent a night apart now unless I had to pull my shifts at the fire department. But even then, she would usually come to the fire house and curl up in a chair with me.

Alan normally just turned a blind eye and pretended he didn't see anything. Heck, sometimes he bought enough food for her, too, when he ordered takeout.

I think he enjoyed having her around.

But tonight would be a bit different from our normal routine of dinner, a movie, and then sleep. Tonight, I was asking her to marry me. I knew most women wanted a big, extravagant thing, but Kaecee wasn't that kind of girl. Even when we'd been joking around one day, she'd confessed she didn't particularly want someone to ask her father for her hand in marriage. She felt like that would once again give him too much power. Because while it was the normal, respectful thing to do, her father would take it and run with it.

She always had to keep enforcing boundaries with him.

I fingered the ring in my jacket pocket. It was my mother's, and when I'd told my parents of my plan to marry Kaecee, she'd gone to her room and given me this ring. A couple of weeks ago when she and Kaecee had gotten together for some thrift shopping—something Kaecee now loved to do with my mom—she'd managed to get Kaecee's ring size for me when they'd been trying on antique rings.

I stepped into the loft and was instantly greeted by one of Kaecee's sweet kisses. "Hey," she greeted. "Farrah made a casserole. I think she's going a bit stir crazy now that she's not working as much."

I laughed. "Probably." I dropped a kiss to the top of her head. "Let's eat. I'm starved."

We sat down at the small table she'd purchased a couple of weeks ago for us to eat at. I'd been fine just sitting on her bed and eating, but she said it began to feel uncivilized and lazy. Guess she hadn't gotten the memo that men like me were so basic we'd sitting on the freaking floor.

Every time I thought a moment would come up to ask her, it just didn't feel right in my gut. And I didn't want to screw this up. I wanted her to look back on it and think it was one of the best days of her life. I wanted it to be one of those memories she would always remember, even if she ever began to lose her memory as she got older.

I wanted this to be one of the ways she remembered us.

So, that night, I didn't ask her. I put the ring back in its box while she was in the shower, and I cuddled with her that night while we fell asleep.

I'd ask her before the week was up and I had to do another forty-eight-hour shift at work, but I just needed it to be absolutely perfect for her—nothing less than that would be okay.