Chapter 38 Wish Come True
WISH COME TRUE
VIOLET
What would it look like if someone were to love you well?
SilenceInMidnight: They’d never mistake my silence for absence.
I smell the sandalwood candle and feel the warmth of the fire against my skin before my eyes even open, and a smile pulls at my lips.
I’m home.
I look around from the floor, where I’m lying wrapped in thick blankets right in front of the fireplace. Rowan must have added more logs, as the fire is still fresh and strong.
When we returned from his parents’ home, Rowan pulled me into the solarium, and I knew immediately that he hadn’t been in here since I left. The throw pillows were exactly where I had left them. The flowers I’d arranged on the bookshelf were dying, petals curling at the edges.
We peeled off our rain-soaked clothes and talked, touched, made love with nothing between us—without the barrier of my lost memories, without his guilt of hiding the truth about that night. Finally, just us.
We drank hot cocoa and cuddled with Echo, and Rowan shared more of himself, mostly with his fingers, but on a few rare moments even with his voice, and I loved every single word he gave me, irrespective of the form it came in.
While I rested against his chest, I caught the first pale light of morning creeping in. So I’m not surprised that at some point Rowan pulled the motorized curved shutters closed, and now shadows slip between the slats, striping everything in soft bands of gold and shade.
I sit upright, expecting to find him somewhere nearby, reading or working on his laptop, but I’m alone in the room. Maybe he took Echo out, or maybe he’s in the kitchen.
I’m about to rise when I notice cream-colored envelopes identical to the ones Rowan has always used for his letters. Several of them are fanned across the coffee table, my name written on each one in his familiar writing.
My breath catches.
The only difference is the date printed neatly at the top of each envelope.
One for every day I was away. Every day I spent at his parents’ house, he was here writing to me.
Oh, Night.
I reach for the most recent one, the letter he wrote yesterday, slip my finger beneath the seal and open it slowly.
My dear Purple,
Today I want to tell you about the question: What would it look like if someone were to love you well?
I answered in one line. They’d never mistake my silence for absence.
It sounds simple when I write it like that, but it has never been a simple thing to live with.
My silence has often been misunderstood for distance, indifference, or simply something lacking.
But my silence has never been empty. It’s where I keep everything I cannot say. Every thought I wish I could share.
And I hoped I could find someone who would not measure my love by how loudly it is expressed. Someone who could understand that when I sit beside them without speaking, I’m not pulling away but choosing to stay in the only way I know how.
But then you came. Someone who didn’t just understand me but listened in a way that has nothing to do with sound.
When I’m quiet with you, I don’t feel invisible. It’s like you understand that my silence is not a wall but a door I have never known how to open properly. And somehow, without asking, without forcing, you stand on the other side of it anyway.
With you, I do not feel like I am being waited on to become more. I feel like I’m enough, exactly as I am.
When I wrote that answer, I was thinking of someone hypothetical. I never imagined that through those responses, I would find you. The person who never mistakes my silence for absence, who stays despite my quiet.
Today, I’m not wishing for that person. I’ve already found her.
Yours,
Night.
I go from one letter to another, reading them slowly, absorbing his words. Today, I don’t just read what he has written; I also remember how I felt when I first read his short responses to these same questions months ago.
How much has changed. How far we have come.
And I cannot wait to live the rest of my life fulfilling every wish, every hope we carried when we filled out that questionnaire for FYS. We wished on every shooting star and every fallen lash that the promise of FYS, which felt almost too good to be true, could lead us to our perfect soulmate.
I reach for the robe Rowan must have left on the couch for me, but before I can leave the solarium to find him, he enters the room with Echo tucked under one arm and a tray with two coffee mugs balanced in the other.
His gaze lands on me. Then on the open envelopes and letters spread across the blankets. He places Echo and the coffee onto the floor, and I don’t give him a chance to say anything— I jump straight into his arms.
“I want to start living our dream life,” I whisper, looking into his eyes.
He smiles, and then he drops to one knee.
My heart catapults out of my body when he reaches into each of his pockets and produces two small boxes. He opens the first and there is a beautiful ring, a purple gemstone at its center, surrounded by a constellation of tiny diamonds.
“Violet, will you be my soulmate?” he signs and then takes the ring carefully from the box. “I want this to be your engagement ring, and your grandmother’s ring to be your wedding ring. I have a matching band for that.”
He opens the second box. A simple silver band, clean and understated, that matches the band of my grandmother’s ring exactly. Except for the inscription along the curve, written in dark purple ink.
Night x Purple x Forever.
“Yes,” I squeal, and then I throw my arms around him before he can even stand. He loses his balance completely, and we both go down onto the floor in a heap, laughing.
When we’ve recovered enough to breathe, he slides the ring onto my finger.
“I want a big celebration for our wedding,” he signs, and my heart squeezes.
“Rowan, I’m happy with just you, your family, and our friends.”
He shakes his head and reaches up, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear before his hands lift again. “I’m not. This is the day we will remember for the rest of our lives, and I want us to celebrate it. I have too much to be grateful for.” A pause as his eyes land on mine. “Most of all, you.”
There is absolutely no way I can say no to that.
I will give him the most epic day he has ever seen.