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If anything, David loved her even more, and he nodded. “Okay.”
She took his hand and started to head out of the kitchen, only to have David stop her. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“Your payment to the swear jar.”
“Now? Are you serious?”
“Yes. We take the swear jar very seriously.” He tilted his head as something occurred to him. “Speaking of which, did you pay for your last transgression?”
“Yes, I did. You can ask Jacob.”
“I will.”
Letting go of his hand, she opened her purse and pulled out a dollar. “Here.”
“Nice try, but the F-bomb costs a Lincoln. And I’m not talking about the penny.”
“Five dollars? You say the F-bomb all the time—”
“Not when Jacob’s around, I don’t.”
She looked at the jar, with the change and loose bills in it, a few of which were five-dollar bills. “Then whose payments are those?”
“Dick’s.”
Pretending to be annoyed, she pulled out two more dollar bills and held them up. “Here. This is all I have.”
David took the money, then grabbed a little notepad and a pen out of the designated junk drawer. As she watched, he wrote ‘Paige IOU $2.00’, then put it in the jar with her three single dollar bills.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered.
“What part of taking the swear jar seriously do you not understand?” he countered.
“No part, to be honest.”
Together, they went to Jacob’s room, where David started off by explaining how the fake ring had been switched out for a real ring, taking Paige by surprise, because the real ring meant something very important. If she accepted the ring, she and David would get married, which led to an explanation of what it meant for them be married and how their lives would change because of it.
“Would you like that?” David asked when he was finished.
Jacob nodded slowly before looking at Paige. “You’d live here?”
“Yes,” she answered, assuming that would be the case, even though it hadn’t been discussed.
“Every day?”
“And every night.”
“What about Sputnik?”
“He’d live here, too.”
“Okay.” Jacob seemed pleased at the prospect of having a third cat, only to turn slightly pensive. “So, you’d be my mom?”
“Technically, I’d be your stepmom,” she corrected him gently, “which is a little different.”
He thought about that, then asked, “Would I call you ‘stepmom’?”
