Chapter 31 Crystals, Confessions, And Cloudbursts, Oh My! #3
I fail to swallow a sob, and my chest begins to heave uncontrollably as my vision turns to graphite.
“I hate what Leif has done to you. I hate how he’s implanted this ridiculous notion into your brain that you’re not good enough.
You are, Knox. Trust me, you are. You’re not damaged goods.
You’re not a burden. You’ve had to endure horrific verbal abuse from the person who was supposed to love you, and that’s on your dad. ”
It’s an automatic response when his knuckles come up to brush away my tears, even when his own sprint down his cheeks. I wipe his away too.
“You’re the only one who hasn’t thought of me as a burden.”
His ministration melts into a cradling of my jaw, and I lean into his palm, trying to clear my sinuses with each frame-wracking hiccup. “Humans are inherently messy. Nobody is perfect.”
“I love you so much that it shouldn’t be humanly possible to feel this range of emotion,” he whispers, just for the two of us to hear in our own bubble, the rest of the world smelting into one indistinguishable soundtrack of chaos.
“You love me?”
The words that leave the safety of his mouth aren’t hampered by second-guessing or second opinions. “Of course I do. I just wish it hadn’t taken me this long to tell you.”
“I feel it every time I look at you,” I respond, anguish withering away to make room for the love that has always been there, germinating just under the surface, waiting for resentment’s roots to shrivel up.
Without warning, Knox lowers himself to his knees. He holds me by the waist, his chin brushing my belly, and he looks up at me with a reverence that I could never forget.
Not even if time tries to tear us apart again.
A superlunary smile beautifies the moisture drying on his waterlines. “I’m going to marry you one day, Mrs. Mulligan.”
Mrs. Mulligan. He wants to marry me. He wants us to spend the rest of our lives together.
I laugh through the tears—it’s the only way I can handle such a life-changing sentiment. “Aren’t we a little young to get married?”
“I’ll wait as long as it takes. Spending the rest of my life without you will never be an option. You’re it for me. I knew it since the moment I hit you with my car.”
All of that seems so far away now. I can’t believe I thought my life was over when it was just beginning.
“I mean, you did sweep me off my feet,” I joke, trying to lighten the mood.
The movers still mill around us, placing thousand-dollar bouquets despite my mother’s frantic clucking at our increasingly shrinking acreage.
Knox moves aside the chiffon ruffles draped over my midsection to press a kiss to my stomach. “At least it’ll be a good story to tell the kids one day.”
I smile. “Kids? Already planning ahead?”
“Is it bad if I say yes?”
I never thought I’d find anyone who would love me enough to want to have kids together. Like every other teenage girl on this planet, I always dreamed of having my own family. I just wanted to mean something to someone. And Knox, he let me live out that longing that I had tried so hard to bury.
As if on cue, I begin tightroping over a ravine of uncertainty—a paradigm of my innermost thoughts. “What if something happens? What if we don’t end up—”
Knox’s grip on my hips tightens. “Please, for the love of God, don’t you dare finish that sentence.
You could never possibly understand how much you’ve changed my life.
I was so wrapped up in hockey that love never mattered.
It was never in the cards for me. It was hell, living my life as a cog in some grander machine just to get my father’s approval.
But then you undid all his harm in a matter of seconds.
That’s something I’ll never take for granted.
I’ll find you, in every timeline, in every life we live thereafter, because it’s always been you. ”
It’s always been me.
Even when I didn’t have my shit together and was obsessed with the wrong guy, Knox waited for me, knowing that there was no guarantee I’d reciprocate his feelings. God, I fucking love him.
I don’t tread lightly anymore. I don’t fear the outdated, ghost-whispered warnings that try and deter me from unscrewing the bolts around my heart—of freeing it from layers of guarded precautions to finally give it to its rightful owner.
“You’re the first and only person who’s ever seen the real me.
It feels like I’ve been invisible my whole life.
I had convinced myself that I wasn’t worthy enough to be loved—that there had to be something wrong with me because nobody would ever look my way.
But then you came along, and you were so…
kind. It’s a low bar, I know, but it meant the world to me.
You stuck by my side when I was figuring out my feelings, and you never once pressured me into choosing you.
You covered my hospital bill; you wanted to help pay my debt.
Nobody’s ever taken care of me like that before.
I’ll be indebted to you for the rest of my life. ”
Knox shakes his head. “Not indebted, Staten. Never that. I wanted to take care of you. I still do. You and your mom have been on your own for so long, just barely scraping by, and I’ll never rest until the two of you can live comfortably.”
I don’t have to do any of this alone anymore. I can finally just…just take a fucking break without feeling a titanic amount of guilt. And on those days when I can’t provide like I want to, I know Knox will be there to support me.
“Thank you for loving me. For healing that broken girl who spent every Valentine’s Day wishing for a love that would transcend time.
I never saw my future as anything more than spreadsheets and iced coffee runs, but you took a chance on me even when I was so cruel to you in the beginning,” I tell him, briefly glancing up at the gunmetal cataclysm balanced overhead—eerily reminiscent of the day when I convinced myself to carry my grudge with me into the afterlife.
Luckily for me, I wasn’t going to be a resident there just yet.
His tears have retreated, replaced with a smile that rounds out his cheeks.
“Hey, hey. You had every right to be. I don’t hold it against you, and you should give yourself some grace.
It’s been my greatest honor to hold your heart in my hands.
And I’ll always be gentle with it, Ace. Always. You’re stuck with me for good.”
“There’s nowhere I’d rather be,” I promise, running one of my hands through his wet hair, wringing water from a strand with my forefinger and thumb.
I finally address the elephant on the lawn. “Where did you get all of these flowers on such short notice anyways?”
“Let’s just say I know a guy.”
“Where am I supposed to keep them?! There are hundreds of them.”
“A thousand, actually. But preferably in a storage unit when we get our penthouse together. It could be your own little garden that you never have to water because it’ll never die. Something permanent.”
Aside from the fact that he just admitted he wants to move in together, I can’t help but fixate on the usage of “permanent” in his sentence. Oh, and “a thousand” is definitely an honorable mention.
“You paid attention to that?” I blurt in shock.
Knox slowly lengthens his legs, rising to his full height yet still bowing his head to meet me halfway. A six-foot-three behemoth curving over the girl he’s vowed to protect. Predator and prey that shouldn’t work together under the law of nature but do.
“I pay attention to everything when it comes to you. It may be the first class I ever ace.”
I rise to my tiptoes with polished confidence, brushing his lips with mine. “There’s still one more test left.”
And then, for the first time in my life, I seize the fucking moment.
Kissing him is even better this time around, which I didn’t think was possible.
A head rush of pleasure and pain dance parallel to our hungry mouths, and a pantheon of stars skips over my vision as love twinges somewhere deep in my belly.
It’s the perfect length for a kiss, with additives to sweeten it. There is no urgency, for I know that my Knox isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We don’t use it as a gateway into something more—it just is. A love letter condensed into a single gesture.
And the craziest part? I’m more than okay with it. The girl with the endless to-do list has finally checked off the last box. Little did she know that her once self-proclaimed archenemy would be the one to get her to set down her pen.