Forty-one
Sadie
The last show was incredible, but it also symbolized the end. Ben sang our song, and it was the hardest start to our goodbye. We love each other, and we always will, but love isn’t enough. In the short time I’ve been with Ben, I’ve matured in some ways. I once believed love was the answer. But being married, especially to Ben, has taught me that love is just the beginning.
“A fair. You brought me to a fair?” I question, shocked this is what he wants to do on our last night together—one I wasn’t going to give him but decided to because truthfully, I want it too. It’s selfish, it’s playing with fire, but if it’s goodbye for us, I want it to be a damn good one.
“You’ll see. Trust me?” he says, shutting the cab door after helping me out.
“I think I always have. That’s why we’re here.” I’m not referring to our location but rather our marriage. I trusted each and every word he said, every promise that he could never keep.
“Don’t do that. Please.” He puts my hand in his and gives me his Ben eyes, those deep brown eyes with honey dripping from them.
“Don’t lead me down another road that I can’t travel on,” I warn him with a heavy sigh.
“I won’t. Come on.” Taking my hand, he makes a beeline toward the Ferris wheel.
Approaching the Ferris wheel, I smile discreetly. The small gesture feels meaningful.
As we climb on, he tells the ride operator to let us go around until he signals us to get off. I find the request odd, and I begin to wonder what he could be up to.
We ride around a few times without saying a word, watching the moon over the water. The sounds of other games and rides go off in the background, but he says nothing. I feel him watching me, waiting for me to speak first, but I really have no idea what to say. This is the last night we will be together like this. What can I possibly say?
“Today was hard.” That’s the best I can come up with.
“How?”
“You confused me even more, Ben. You say you love me and want this baby, but all I can see when you say that is you pushing me away that night.” The image comes back in a rush, and I shake my head to try to get rid of it. I can’t think back to that. I can’t.
“I’m so fucking sorry, angel. I will regret that forever,” Ben tells me, wrapping his arm around me and turning my body into him. I want to reject the embrace, but I don’t. Call me a glutton for pain.
“You live with too many regrets and too much guilt. Aren’t you tired of always adding more to your list? Aren’t your shoulders heavy?” I ask, searching his face.
“The only regret I have left is how I’ve pushed you away and caused you pain.”
“Then why are you trying so hard to get me back when you know that?” I ask with a huff.
“Because I love you. I could try to give you more words to define that love, but there aren’t any that can justify it. I love you, Sadie, and I want to fight to get us through this. I want to look back years from now and know that the two young kids who fell in love when they had no clue what kind of shit they would go through made it out. That we made it through.”
He searches my face, and I shake my head in disbelief, my eyes swimming with tears. Is there such thing as overcrying? Or running out of tears? I think we have both cried more in this marriage than smiled.
“How can you expect us to get through all we have been through. How can I forget what you did the past few months? Ben, how can you expect me to do that so fast?” I’m yelling as we pass the ride operator, but he pretends he doesn’t hear us. I wouldn’t care if he did. I’m completely wrecked.
“Because I’m getting clean. I’m working hard every day to become a better man, and when we get home, I will continue on my road to recovery because I have you and our baby.”
“You took my people-pleasing and abused it, Ben.” I sneer at him, because that trait was something I said I wanted to run from, but after everything, I gave in the most with him.
Quickly, he grabs my face in his hands. “Because I was wrong. You are right. I saw what I wanted, and that was you, and I did so many things to ruin it. But this is different. Things have changed, and I think deep down you know that.”
“I want to believe it,” I whisper, trying to break from his grip, but he keeps it tight, giving me no way out.
“You’re my grace. You were sent here to fucking save me, Sadie. You have my soul in the palm of your hands, in your heart, on your wedding finger, inside our child. I won’t lose the only two people in my life that I’ve loved more than my mother.”
I choke, letting out a soft sob. How come he’s never said that to me before? Where were those words the whole time I needed them? My soul softens a little more, and that little wick of burned-out hope is slowly sizzling back to a burning flame.
God, I’ve needed him to make this right for so long. I don’t say anything, but I urge him with my eyes to go on, to keep telling me what I need to hear, because he’s holding onto my heart, and I don’t want him to let it slip away again.
“You and our child are everything to me. Please know that I will not lose sight of that again. I need you to bring me back to where I feel most at home. In your arms, in your heart, baby, right here.” He lets his hand travel to my heart, the warm touch making it beat again. I swear I can feel it thundering as he revives it with his hand.
“Ben,” I cry, pulling him in and locking my hands around the nape of his neck. We kiss for the first time in weeks. The taste of him mingles with the salt of my tears, and he takes over, grabbing my hips and placing me in his lap. The bucket we’re in rocks a little, and he breaks our kiss with his own tearful laugh.
“When the boat goes a rockin’. . .” he teases, bringing his lips to mine again. We do this for an entire circuit before we find ourselves in the air at the very top. Pulling away, I rest my forehead against his, placing my hand on his heart. His hand drops to my stomach. I swear I feel an energy where two souls that are drawn to one another—made for one another—finally find one another.
I’ve fallen in love with Ben all over again. Like the first time, all it took was a moment in his world to know that he is my everything, to know that his life is my life and my life is his.
“Sadie?”
“Hmm?”
“Marry me?” I chuckle and peer up at him.
“We’re already married, Ben.”
“We are, but I want to marry you again. This time with your parents there, the way it should have been. With the version of me that you deserve.”
“Ben, I love every version of you. I only wanted you to stop hurting me. To stop hurting yourself.” I need him to understand that I don’t blame him for the path he traveled to get here. He isn’t a bad person, and he shouldn’t try to be someone he isn’t. The real Ben was there the whole time, but there was a giant wall blocking him from accepting and truly giving the love that he wants and deserves.
“I never doubted that. But this time, I love this version of me. This is the version I want you to marry.” He places me back beside him and very carefully drops to one knee in the bucket.
“I’m asking you to marry me like your dad did with your mom.”
My heart dances, and a beam of light radiates from the center of me.
“Ben. I’ll marry the same you, just in a different light.” With that, I pull him back up by his shirt, and we kiss, my heart beating wildly for this man, every doubt I ever had vanishing.
“I can’t believe you’re trusting me and giving me another chance,” he says, pulling away. Looking into the eyes of my other half, the better side of my soul, I get lost inside him.
I pause for a moment and sculpt his face in my hands, gazing lovingly into his honey-brown eyes before I speak the realest words I will ever speak in my life. “That’s what I get for loving you, Ben Cooper.”
And right here, Ben Cooper shows me what I have been searching for for so long. Someone to love. A person to test me in ways that make me a stronger person. I lived to please others and protect others, and though I did that with Ben, in the end, I broke through. I learned to see my strength and find what I want in life. That is him. That is us. It was wild and toxic and all-encompassing, but it was real. All of it was real.