A/N: Thanks for the latest reviews. Yes, I know, previous chapter had some serious surprise angst in that last part, but hey, y'all know me and you know I'll fix it, right? :)

(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

Chapter 18

It had been five days. The only thing Wade had found to be glad about in all that time was his own lousy timing. After all, it was thanks to his deciding to propose to Zoe on the opening night of his bar that meant he had spent so much of the time since she left for New York concentrated only on running Wade's Place. It left him little time to worry, to wonder, to think too much, or to regret. There was too much to do, too many people depending on him in various ways, way too much hanging in the balance to be so stupid as to dwell on the fact his girlfriend had left on a two-day trip, only to send an email, right when she was due back, to let him know she was staying on in New York a little longer.

Throwing himself into his work seemed to help, until suddenly he found himself being fast-shuffled into dinner with Lavon and Lemon, Bluebell's latest super-couple, who simply wouldn't take no for an answer. He had hoped, however naively, that they were just looking to distract him in some new and interesting way. No such luck. They had barely got through the main course before the real reason for his being there came out.

"So, exactly how long is it going to be before you go figure out this mess with Zoe Hart?" Lemon asked outright, because beating around the bush just wasn't her style, Wade knew.

"I think what Lemon means to say is, have you maybe considered giving her a call or something? You know, just to check in, see how she's doing?"

Wade smiled because he couldn't help it, despite the topic of conversation. Poor Lavon, ever the peacemaker, forever putting on his mayoral hat and trying to get everybody to just talk it out and get along. If only it were always that simple.

"So, when y'all invited me to dinner, what you actually wanted was to stage an intervention. That's what they call it, right? When you sit some unsuspecting friend down and tell him he has a problem he doesn't seem to be aware of for himself?" His flatware clattered against his plate as he dropped it down, then threw the napkin from his lap onto the table too. "Well, let me save you a little trouble. I am absolutely aware of what my problem is, alright? The woman I love most in the world just up and left me. That is my problem, and I would surely love for one of you to tell me how in the hell I'm supposed to solve the fact that she is gone, and that it was the idea of marrying me that made her run so far, so fast!"

With that, he got up from the table and headed straight for the door, slamming right out of it, in spite of both his friends calling for him to stop and come back. Of course, he could have gone charging right back to the gatehouse and locked himself in, he didn't have to deal with Lemon or Lavon if he didn't want to. Strange then that he hung around on the back porch steps, sitting himself down there and putting his face in his hands a minute.

He could cry, he honestly could. Wouldn't be the first time in the past five days, but he was glad to say that at least nobody had seen any of those tears. Well, Earl once, but that was different. Nobody else, and he didn't really want that to change now. Seemed maybe he was out of luck, as he heard the back door open and close again, then smelled Lemon's familiar perfume as she sat down beside him.

"If I ruin my skirt by sitting down here, then you are buying me a new one, Wade Kinsella," she said nudging his shoulder with her own.

It raised a smile, as it was doubtless supposed to. Wade didn't hate that she could do that for him. Somebody surely needed to.

"I'm sorry I yelled and stormed out like that," he told her with a sigh. "I know you meant well, both o' you."

"Yes, we did," she confirmed, "but I'm sorry too, for not bein' a little more tactful."

Wade snorted and turned to look at her properly. "If you was tactful, you wouldn't be you, Lemon."

"And if Zoe didn't have a panic attack every time something serious happened in her romantic life, maybe she wouldn't be Zoe," she said then, "and I know for sure that if you didn't put your whole heart into everything that mattered to you, then you absolutely would not be Wade Kinsella."

"You're prob'ly right," he agreed, nodding his head, "but where does that leave us all? You tellin' me I should do somethin', Zoe all the way up north, and me sat here feelin' like she took a piece o' me when she left that I can't ever get back."

Lemon shifted a little closer, put her arm around him and pulled until his head landed on her shoulder.

"Since you're asking me, then I'm gonna tell you what I think. I think you need to be as brave as you were five nights ago when you opened that amazing bar of yours. I think you need to get on a plane and go to New York and make certain that Zoe knows it's not too late. And yes, maybe she will still feel that she cannot marry you, because of her strong feelings against matrimony, and that will be hard, but maybe, just maybe you two can figure out a way forward regardless of that. If you love somebody enough, I'd like to think there is nothing you can't achieve. If you really put your mind and your heart into it, how can you possibly fail?"

It was a nice sentiment, Wade couldn't deny, but putting it into practice was a whole other thing. Of course, it had occurred to him to follow Zoe to New York and try again, but he made his grand gestures already, and look how they turned out.

"I honestly don't know if I can go through that again," he said softly. "Seeing that look on her face, hearing her tell me that we can't ever have the future I want for us or... or worse, that we can't have any future at all."

It seemed even his friend didn't have an answer to that one. Lemon Breeland speechless. It was something he would usually have laughed at, made a real good joke out of, but not tonight. Wade saw no humour in anything, only disappointment that there really was no answer to his problem. All Lemon could give him was a tighter hug, and a kiss on the top of his head. Sweet as it was, it didn't help much. He had a feeling nothing really would, unless maybe Zoe decided to come home.

It had been five days. Zoe felt bad about that, in a way, but at the same time she just couldn't face going back to Bluebell until she knew what she was going to do next. Figuring that out was the tough part, and unfortunately, her mother wasn't helping much.

"Of course, you felt the need to escape, anybody would," was an example of the kind of 'helpful' thing Candice Hart would say, when Zoe fretted over running out on Wade and staying gone so long. "I don't know why everybody thinks that marriage is the ultimate goal. There should be so much more to life than that."

It made sense. On a basic level, Zoe knew that it did. She knew it was foolish to get married, because statistically, it was bound to fail. Even putting statistics aside, she had anecdotal evidence that marriage was almost always a bad plan. Looking at her parents, and friends of her parents, not to mention friends of her own, like Annabeth, or worse, George and Lemon who never even made it down the aisle at all!

Of course, there were other examples that actually did make it work. Quite a lot of older couples in Bluebell that Zoe met had been happily married for decades. Tom and Wanda seemed like they really would be together forever. Lavon's parents went through a rocky patch, but they came out of the other side just fine, in the end. They just loved each other enough, Zoe supposed.

That was one thing that she was in no doubt of, the fact that she loved Wade Kinsella more than she had ever loved any man she had ever met. Zoe couldn't explain exactly how it had happened, but it had. One day, she was thinking it would be so nice to end up with George Tucker, sometime in the future, if only she could prise him away from his fiancée. Then, all of a sudden, she was looking at Wade and wondering why she hadn't given him a chance sooner.

Of course, he had changed. They both had. They had needed to, given some of the issues they each had. In the end, they had found a way to grow together, to be the best versions of themselves, for their own sakes as well as for each other. It worked. It was nice. Zoe liked who she was in Bluebell, liked the person she aspired to be there, and never more so than when she and Wade had gotten together. They worked. They really worked. Everybody said so, but even without the approval of the town at large, she knew it.

Zoe sighed, stirring her coffee around and around in the cup. Five days. She was only supposed to be gone two. The plan was for her to have a little time and space to think, then go home and talk things out with Wade. It was what she told him she would do, and then, all of a sudden, she found herself sending a stupid email, saying she needed a little longer. Why? What was she achieving by sitting around waiting for some revelation or miracle that clearly wasn't coming?

A sudden knock on the door made her jump in her seat. Her mother rolled her eyes.

"You're so tense," Candice tutted. "You know, I can get you a good prescription for some Xanax," she said, as she went to see who was at the door.

"Like that would help." Zoe caught herself about to roll her eyes too and stopped herself just in time.

No drug was going to help her with her problems. She needed an answer. Something, somebody. A male voice at the door had her up from her seat in a second, running to see who was there. It had to be, it could only be... but it wasn't.

"Thank you," said Candice as she took in the package from the delivery guy with a smile. "He was cute," she told Zoe, after she closed the door and turned to see her standing there. "What? Oh, honey, you didn't think... Well, it wasn't Wade. Why would it be?"

It was what Zoe had thought, what she had hoped, but her mother's question was perfectly valid, and she knew it.

"You're right. Why would it be?" she said, shaking her head, that revelation she had been waiting on finally coming to mind. "Oh my God, why am I so stupid?" she asked herself then, sure she already knew the answer. "I have to go pack!" she yelled, rushing to her room.

"Pack? But why?" Candice yelled behind her. "Zoe, what is going on?"

Throwing clothes and toiletries haphazardly into her case, Zoe yelled right back; "I have somewhere I need to be!"

He had made up his mind. It was partly the intervention from Lemon and Lavon, but more so a conversation he had with his father about what it was like trying to live without the love of your life. Wade had the advantage that at least Zoe was still someplace he could get to, so he was going. He had packed a bag and he was headed for the airport, no ticket, no concrete plan, except finding some way to get himself to New York. Honestly, the idea of heading up north on a whim like that scared the living daylights out of him, but he was prepared to do it. What he had with Zoe was too important to give up on easily. One last shot, he had to try.

"Wanda, you're in charge until I get back," he told her, not even looking where he was going as he headed for the exit. "If you have any problems, you can call me, but I might not be able to answer right away, so-"

"Why? Where are you going?"

It wasn't Wanda's voice that interrupted him. A woman, sure, but not Wanda, and not even from the right direction to be her. Swallowing hard, Wade turned around to look, half afraid he was so tired and anxious that he was having delusions when he saw what looked like Zoe standing there.

"So, where are you going?" she asked him again, looking up at him with those big brown eyes he had missed so damn much in just a few days.

"Uh, nowhere, I guess," he admitted, letting his bag drop onto the floor. "You're here."

"I'm here." Zoe nodded, almost smiled a little, but said nothing more.

Wade wished he knew what he was supposed to say to her. He had a few ideas of what he might have said if he went to New York, though he had mostly hoped to come up with a better speech on the plane. Now, he was totally at a loss.

Thankfully, after a few seconds, he at least had the good sense to ask her the most important question. "Uh, are you stayin'?"

"I hope so."

"You wanna go out back or...?"

"No, not really," she told him, gesturing to a corner booth, which they both then moved over to.

People were looking, listening, which was probably not the best idea, but Wade couldn't think anything would be worse than what he already went through on opening night, with the disastrous proposal and all.

"So..." he said, when they had sat in silence for a good couple of minutes.

"So," Zoe echoed back. "I guess I should start with the fact that I'm sorry. I really am so sorry, Wade. For the way I acted on your opening night, and for emailing you to say I was staying away longer. That wasn't okay."

Wade shrugged his shoulders. "Gotta take my share o' the blame for the proposal at least, doc. Not like you didn't tell me plenty that you didn't believe in marriage. I guess I just thought with what we had and all, maybe you woulda changed your mind or somethin'. I don't know," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck, looking anywhere but at her. "I'll take the apology for you stayin' away so long though. After all, you told me it'd just be a couple o' days, then we could talk some more, only you didn't come back at all..."

"I know, that really wasn't fair of me," she said guilty, looking down at her own hands fidgeting on the table, starting to pick at the edge until she clearly realised that was a bad idea. "Part of the reason I'm here right now is because I realised what a horrible coward I was being, and that I was only hurting you more, which I really, really did not want to do."

"Okay." Wade nodded once. "So, that's part of the reason. Wanna tell me about the other part?"

Zoe took a deep breath and brought her eyes up to meet his own then. "You," she said simply, smiling some. "It's always been you, Wade. I realised all I wanted was just you. It was only that, well, when you asked me to marry you, I just got so scared."

"Because you wanted to say no."

"No, because I didn't want to say no," she confessed, knocking all the air out of Wade's lungs in an instant, whether she meant to or not. "Don't you see? That's the scary part. I really wanted to say yes, which is crazy, because you were right before, I don't believe in marriage, I'm not sure I ever have, and we've only been seriously dating for a few months, so it makes even less sense on a practical level, but still, I really, really wanted to say yes."

Wade hardly knew what to think about what he was hearing. All this time, he genuinely believed that Zoe's problem was that she didn't want to get married. Now, it seemed she had the opposite issue. She did want to marry him, she was just terrified of what that meant. Wade had no clue what he was supposed to say to that, but it seemed he didn't need to know, because Zoe wasn't done yet.

"You know, I started thinking about it when we saw Tom and Wanda get married," she explained, moving a little closer. "It was such a beautiful day and they were so in love. We were in this really good place and there was a part of me that started to daydream that maybe, someday, why not? After that, I guess I just dismissed it as my being all caught up in the romance and the moment. I put it out of my mind, because it seemed easier that way.

"Then, I was in New York, watching some more friends get married, looking so happy, like some kind of fairytale, and no matter how much I tried to tell myself that life isn't like that, that their chances of making a marriage work are so low, I just... I wanted it. I wanted it so badly, and it's not that it stopped being scary, because it still is, but I was ready then. I kept on thinking, 'If Wade comes to New York, that will prove something.' As if that would be a sign that maybe we really should get married. It was only this morning when I suddenly realised, I was being so stupid. I was waiting for you to prove yourself, when you already did that, in the biggest way that you possibly could, when you stood up on that bar and asked me, in front of everybody, to marry you."

She reached for his hand then and he let her take it. He was too stunned by what he was hearing to do anything else. Besides, he had just missed her so damn much these past few days.

"I realised that I was the one who needed to prove something, to make the next move. That's the main reason why I came back, why I'm here right now," she explained, one hand slipping away to dip into her pocket. "It's why I have this," she said, placing the small box on the table in front of him,

Wade hardly dare imagine that it was what he thought it might be. The very idea actually made him laugh, even as his eyes welled up. He really was becoming a serious crier lately!

"Wade?" said Zoe softly, waiting for him to look her way before she went on. "I was just wondering, can you forgive me for making you wait this long? And also, would you please marry me?" she asked at last.

He couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe she was back, really couldn't believe that she wanted to marry him so much that she wasn't just saying yes to his proposal, but making one of her own too.

"Are you freakin' kidding me, Zoe Hart?" he asked her, not even sure if he was laughing or crying by then, and damn sure that she was caught up in the same problem. "Yes, I'll marry you," he told her, as if she needed him too, "if you're gonna marry me," he countered, pulling his own ring box from his pocket to show her again.

"Yes, I will," she confirmed, reaching out for him.

It was only somewhere in the middle of all the desperate kisses and bone-crushing hugs that either one of them seemed to realise they had an audience. Wade's Place maybe wasn't quite as full-to-capacity as it had been on opening night, but there were people aplenty, and all of them were cheering, applauding, whistling, the whole works. It was why Wade and Zoe were both simultaneously laughing and blushing bright red as they pulled apart, arms still around each other, not willing to let go for anything, even as he put his momma's engagement ring onto her finger.

"You seriously bought me one o' these things?" he said then, reaching for the box on the table.

"Obviously." Zoe rolled her eyes. "You think I would propose with an empty box?" she said, encouraging him to open it up. "It's not fancy. Believe me, I know you're not the Liberace type... thankfully," she said with a grin as Wade finally looked at his ring.

"It's perfect," he told her, knowing he would have thought so no matter what it looked like, because the ring came from Zoe, and it signified he was bound to become her husband before too long.

Surprising as it might seem to some, that was all Wade Kinsella really wanted out of life right now, and since it was what Zoe wanted too, he would say things were working out pretty damn well all around.

To Be Continued...

A/N2: I just have a short Epilogue left to share now, and you won't have to wait too long for that, as I plan to post it on Monday! In the meantime, reviews are always very welcome ;)