Another Love Another time

Epilogue

1 year later

River:

We have softball practice for the adult league we play in. We have a group of fun players who care about putting in the work to get better as a team while still having fun. They are mostly people from work, but we've picked up a few players who wanted to play and needed a team. This year we picked up a female pitcher who pitched in college. She's amazing and she gets along well with the team. Since we have a pitcher Auggie doesn't get to pitch as much. He's taken over more of the coaching responsibility for the team which he really enjoys, but today he's pitching to me while I catch. We have become a well-oiled machine. I'm sure he would much rather be in the catching position, but he lets me have it. He loves me like that. Auggie throws a warmup pitch to me. Logan's here today so Auggie has been razing him about hitting. Logan steps up to the base and I get in my catching stance as do the rest of the players on our team. I give Auggie the signal. He nods and he sends the ball my way, but it's not the pitch I signaled for, and Logan bunts the incoming ball. And the ball flies in the air. I see Auggie running to cover home plate. I throw off all my head gear and run to catch the ball. I quickly grab the ball and squeeze my mitt, so I don't drop it, but it doesn't feel like a softball. I quickly drop whatever is in my hand. I bend down and look to see what I caught. It looks to be clothing wrapped in rubber bands around it. I pull the rubber bands off and look at a shirt and gasp. The shirt says, "Will you marry me?"

I quickly turn around and see Auggie down on one knee, I fall down on my knees. "What are you doing?" I ask him.

"Isn't it obvious?" He gestures to the crowd that I'm now noticing. Our family and friends are here. A lot are holding up signs saying various things. "Say yes" or "Marry me instead." I look back at Auggie and we both have tears in our eyes. We both have worked our butts off to build the beautiful relationship we have today.

"River, will you marry me?" he asks me. I tackle him to the ground with all my catching gear on and smash my lips to his.

I pull back, "Yes, yes, yes." I scream. Everybody cheers. He pulls away and grabs something from his pocket. It's the ring, he slides it on my finger and another piece clicks into place. I love our life. We have both made the decision to only have people who have our best interest in our lives. Auggie is the man I always thought he was. Every day he is intentional in how he shows me I'm the most important person in his life. I'm sure when we have kids that will change, but he has proven to me that he will put our family first. I'm going to be Mrs. Auggie Hunt!

Everyone is coming up congratulating us. I'm smiling so hard my face hurts. Practice is forgotten and someone orders pizza to be delivered and I see someone just showed up with a couple of kegs of beer. I look around at the life we built, the obstacles we overcame and am just grateful for my life.

5 years later

Auggie:

To say the last five years have been a roller coaster is an understatement. River and I got married six months after I proposed. It was nothing big. Just our close friends and family. We were going to wait a few years to have kids, but we got pregnant on our honeymoon. There were a lot of changes that year. We had our daughter Tori. I bawled like a baby; River was the most beautiful women, and I was the luckiest man alive. Baxter and River decided to start their own PI firm so after Tori was born, she left the department. It took them a year to get a study flow of clients. It was good because it saved on day care costs, and she was able to be at home.

After two years when the PI firm was doing good, I decided to quit the department and go back to school. We moved closer to St. Louis so River would be closer to Baxter. He took most of the fieldwork and she managed most of the office work. When she got pregnant with our second child Max, she stopped doing field work all together. They hired another PI and she was able to handle all the office stuff. We are still close with Mackey. He's the God parent to our son. He comes down at least once a month to visit. He's met someone down here and we all hang out when he comes to visit. I can see him transferring soon. Logan now plays for the Cardinals, so we get to see him a lot too. We go to quite a few games. Tori and Max love to watch their Uncle Logan play baseball.