“Yes. Do you forgive me?”
He started to issue another denial that she owed him an apology, but she laid a finger across his lips. “Fifty-fifty, Wells.”
This woman. She was a wonder. Every second with her was going to be a dream. Thank God he got to have seconds with her. Minutes. Years. Decades. Every last one of them. “Then I forgive you, too.” He caught another one of her tears with his thumb, the very sight of it wrenching his heart sideways. “And listen to me, we’re going to be a team whether or not you’re standing next to me in a uniform. When I’m not on tour, I’m with my girl. I’ll move to Palm Beach so fast, it’ll make your ponytail crooked.”
She let out a watery laugh.
“Don’t worry, I’ll fix it for you. I’m an expert now.”
“I love you,” she sobbed with her eyes closed. “It’s like, painful, you know?”
Fuck. His vision was blurring again, too. So much that he had to bury his face in her stomach again so her shirt could absorb the moisture.
After several centering breaths, he managed to separate himself enough to look up into the eyes of his best friend, his equal, the woman he wanted to wake up beside every day for the rest of his life, and he let the emotion in his chest pour out of him. “I love you, too. So much. I think deep down, I had faith we’d be together again, because love like ours doesn’t just go away. It cuts clean through everything. It’s start-to-finish kind of love, all right? You know it and I know it.” He bowed his head a moment to find his breath. Looking into her eyes was stealing it clean out of his lungs. “While I’m down here on my knees, I’m going to ask you to be my wife. I can golf on my own, but I can’t face a day where we don’t belong to each other, all right?”
“I’ll be your wife.” She nodded, gulping in air. “Yes. I love you, yes.”
Suddenly he had the strength to stand again. To lift Josephine in his arms and hold her tight, dizzy from his ascent to the highest heights this world had to offer.
Life with Josephine.
“I don’t have a ring on me,” he said hoarsely in her ear, before pulling back to finally, God, finally kiss her after far too long. “Will you accept a green jacket until I get you one?”
She shook her head. “I’ll take you, Wells Whitaker. I’ll just take you.”
Epilogue
Eight Years Later
Josephine snuck a look at her watch. Ten minutes to closing and she still had customers in the shop, but that wasn’t unusual anymore. Over the last eight years, the Golden Tee had built a reputation as a must-do experience on every Florida golf trip . . . and she currently had a waitlist for consultations a mile long. She’d let the guests finish navigating the drone footage they’d collected throughout the day before kicking them out. The upside to having the most original pro shop in Palm Beach meant a lot of customers.
The downside was they never wanted to leave.
And she adored the shop, but she also really, really loved being home these days.
She took a moment to marvel over the large number on the bottom of the day’s credit card report before stacking the papers and heading to the office, which was a more recent addition at the back of the Golden Tee. As she passed the gathering of golfers, one of them whispered, “That’s Josephine Whitaker. She owns this place.” She pretended not to hear them, but once she stepped into the office, she allowed a smile to stretch her lips.
Let’s face it, a lot of people mentioned her in the same breath as her famous husband, who’d climbed his way back to his rightful position among the top ten in the world. It was only natural. But just as often, she was recognized for building this place. Her love letter to her favorite sport.
She set the credit report down on the desk and looked around the office, her gaze drifting over the framed photograph of Wells proposing to her at the eighteenth hole at the Masters. Beside it, her caddie uniform had also been mounted in a glass box, along with her taped together Wells’s Belle sign.
Josephine couldn’t get enough of the reminders of that roller coaster series of weeks she’d spent falling in love with her husband—love that had only deepened considerably over time. But the picture sitting on her desk? She loved that one even more. Wells asleep on the couch in their living room, his golf cleats full of dirt and grass, a tiny baby girl sleeping on his chest. He’d wanted to get home so bad that afternoon, he hadn’t bothered to change into street shoes before flying back from the tournament.