hey all! sorry it's been soooooooo long! but i got a cute chapter to make up for it. :) i'll work on more later. promise. here ya go.

please R&R. sorry i can't talk more, but i gotta go. here ya go. :)

06. I Love You: Avril Lavigne

I took a deep breath as I shut the TV off for the night. The house was much quieter than it had been in a long time. The baby of the family, little Marie, was grown up and married now, as was Cory. Iggy was anything but pleased about this, but he had nothing to complain about. I was a freaking grandmother!

The word makes me shudder.

It was a hard concept to grasp. My kids . . . thirty-four years old.

And me . . . fifty-one!

The thought made me shudder.

If you think about it, fifty-one wasn't so bad to be a grandmother . . . not really. On the other hand, though, my grandson has to get married soon, which might produce a baby, in which case I'll be a great-grandmother!

I groaned out-loud, and suddenly, the atmosphere of the room changed to something spectacular. It was a change I knew well, and it was a change I always enjoyed.

Fang's hands melted around my shoulders like butter on a hot biscuit. The difference was he was rubbing me, not making me all wet.

Well, he was . . . but we won't go into that.

I smiled softly. "Thank you."

He raised an eyebrow at me, and in his old Fang-like way silently asked, "For what?" Ever since Ari and Alex came along, he had been different. I mean, he had to be. Two growing children didn't need a dad who didn't show and express his love, who might have scared him.

They were grown up now, and completely gone. Now, it was okay for the man I first fell in love with to come back out and give me reasons to fall in love with him all over again—which he had done the very day they were gone and we were all safe.

He began kissing down my neck and across my shoulder tenderly, another one of his wordless ways to begin to express his love. I didn't mind, at all. As a matter of fact, I embraced it with a warm, loving smile and closed eyes.

"I love you," he whispered in the faintest voice, and when I turned to kiss him, he was gone. There was no hope in seeing him, so I simply looked around the room to see where he would decide to just pop up.

It wasn't Fang that surprised me with his appearance all of the sudden. All I could see were a bunch of red rose petals falling, leaving a trail for me to follow. It went all around the house, at first, but finally, it stopped in our bedroom.

What I saw was surprising. Fang wasn't much of a romantic, but when I walked into our room, I was surprised to see nothing but candles lighting the room. It had the smell of, well, him—my favorite scent of all—and he put little paper hearts hanging down from the ceiling. On the bedside table was a bottle of expensive champagne with a bouquet of deep red roses with a little card, a teddy bear, and a box of chocolates. The bed itself was covered in white, red, and black rose petals.

At first, I was speechless. I had no idea Fang would ever do things like this, but sure enough, he did.

Carefully, right as he made an appearance in the far right corner with a loving smile on his lips, I made my way over to the card and began to open it.

Max,

You and I have known each other as long as we can remember. We grew up together. We went through everything together, and we had our trials and struggles, but eventually, we faced our feelings, and look what we've become.

Everything.

You are the most important thing in my world, Max. We have made two beautiful children who have gone off to make beautiful children of their own. We've helped take out a piece of evil polluting our world. We've met the king of England!

Everything we've gone through, we've gone through together. I never want to change that, Max. You and I are meant to be. Period. The end. If we weren't, we wouldn't be thirty-five years into our marriage and still as happy as newly weds.

I have never loved anything as much as I love you. We have made it clear that we're gonna spend the rest of our life together, the entirety of it. Nothing in this world could ever change that, even if our hearts changed.

My heart will always be yours. It always has been. You just didn't know before, when we were younger.

You're probably wondering where this is all coming from, all the flowers, decorations, and such. Well, Max, the answer is simple.

Turn around.

Love eternally,

Fang

I did what the card said only to turn almost right into Fang, who was holding a tiny black velvet box. It was completely surprising, and I almost began crying. Why?

Well, I sort of lost my ring a while back—both my engagement and my wedding ring. It was clear to me now what all of this was about.

He got me a new ring.

When he opened the box, I almost began crying. I, Max Lawrence, do not cry—even if I have gotten older and softened up . . . just a little . . . or not. Anyways, he almost had me in tears.

It wasn't a new ring; it was the old one.

"Will you marry me again, Maxie? This time, for real?"

That got me right there because although I thought when it came down to it that I wanted a courthouse wedding, I always regretted not having an actual ceremony.

And that's exactly what he was giving me.

I nodded with the brightest smile he had gotten out of me in the longest time, and with his own matching smile, he took me in his arms and spun me around.

It didn't surprise me that he didn't even have time to sit me down before we began kissing—quite passionately. I could feel the platinum ring with the gorgeous oval cut diamond sliding onto my finger, and all I could do was grip him tighter in complete bliss.

As he began to remove my shirt, I remembered something very important, and I practically jumped out of the bed. Well, there's no practically to it, because I did jump out of the bed.

He looked completely surprised, and I was quick to dash into our bathroom and turn the water on.

Naturally, he followed me, and he was grinning as his still sexy, muscular frame slipped into the bathroom. "Max, there's no point in taking a shower. We're just gonna get really nasty all over again."

I shook my head quickly and began trying to push him out the door. "I need to shave."

The most surprising thing of all was when he grabbed my wrists, and instead of letting me go, he stepped into the bathroom and turned the water off.

"Max, you don't have to try and be perfect for me," he whispered softly. "I don't care. We're not having sex, Max. It's called making love, and love prefers imperfections."

That was all it took for me. Put a fork in me, 'cause I was done. In just an instant, I was jumping into his arms, wrapping my legs around my waist and madly kissing him.

This had to be the best day I had in a very, very long time.