Chapter 27
Amelia
My mouth fell open in surprise. It felt like the world stopped spinning as I stared down at the man I nearly lost. My life had been this wild and crazy adventure since I met him. In many ways, I felt like we’d known one another for years. But in reality, it’d only been a few weeks.
A laugh fell from my lips.
“What? No! You’re still high on pain medication, aren’t you?” I teased.
He shook his head. “I’m completely level-headed.”
“We barely know one another,” I reminded him.
He gently squeezed my hand until my eyes met his.
“We know everything we need to know. Who cares how much time it’s been? We’ve already been through more shit in a week than most couples go through in a lifetime together. How well we know one another can’t be measured by hands on a clock.”
I laughed and rolled my eyes. “This is crazy. You know that?”
He smiled. “What with us hasn’t been crazy? How we met?”
I chuckled and nodded. “Crazy.”
“This little adventure we’ve been on?”
“Crazy,” I agreed again.
“How have we lived our lives up until meeting?”
“Crazy.” I bit my bottom lip.
“See? This is so fitting for us. Why fight it now?”
“We haven’t even talked about a future together yet. I mean, you want to get married, clearly, but do you want kids? Where do you want to live? What do you plan on doing for work now that you’re changing career paths?”
He shook his head. “All of that is just filler. What matters most is that no matter where we live, no matter what careers we start, no matter how many kids there are—or aren’t—we’re together.
” He tugged my hand until I moved to sit on the edge of his bed, and then he cupped my jaw and pulled me down to his lips, kissing me soft and slow, a kiss that sank past the surface and made my heart race.
“You’re all I want, Amelia.” He nipped my lower lip. “Will you please fucking marry me?”
Even though I knew agreeing to marry him was downright insane, it’s the direction my heart was tugging me. Suddenly, everything made sense. They say that looking back, vision is 20/20, and that had never been clearer to me.
When I walked in and found my boyfriend fucking my best friend, I thought my life was over. And I guess in a way, it was. That part of my life, anyway. Stealing his car was my rebirth, and I drove it straight into my new life with Oliver.
While the logical side of my brain was screaming things like, “You haven’t known him long enough; he’s a complete stranger; don’t do it,” my heart was chanting one word: yes.
“Yes,” I laughed out against his lips.
He pulled back slightly so he could look me in the eye. His brows were lifted in surprise. “Really?”
I nodded as giggles spilled from my lips. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
He grabbed my face and pulled me in for a long, hard kiss full of passion, excitement, and most of all, love.
I broke our kiss and lay down at his side, where he wrapped his arm under my neck so he could hold me close. I held up my left hand.
“How long do you think it’ll be before we can afford a ring?” I teased, knowing we were both completely broke since we used all of my cash to fund our trip, and his final deal fell through.
“I have money, Crash.”
I twisted so I could look up at his face. “You do?”
“Of course. I’ve been planning on starting a new life for years now. You really think I wouldn’t put money back to start over with?”
My mouth fell open. “Then why were we using my money this whole time?”
“I didn’t want to use my cards in case he was watching my accounts. I didn’t want to tip him off on our location.” He grinned. “Plus, it was a way to get you to stick with me for a little while longer.”
The corners of my mouth started to tip upward, but I caught them and held them down. “What if I had said no?”
He shrugged. “Then I would’ve figured out some other way to keep you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Then I expect another proposal—with a ring.”
He grinned and pulled me in for a kiss. “Anything for you, baby.”
Oliver was kept in the hospital for another week and a half, but once it was clear that he was doing well, he was released with orders to follow up with his primary doctor to have stitches removed and to start on a physical therapy plan to ensure he’d regain a full range of motion.
The first thing he wanted to do after being released was eat food that wasn’t prepared in a hospital, so we went to a nice restaurant across town and enjoyed our first good meal in days.
He ordered a medium rare steak with a baked potato and steamed vegetables, and I ordered my usual chicken strips and fries.
After the waitress walked away, I looked over at him.
“So, when you say you have money, how much are we talking? Like this meal is covered or I’m out of toilet paper; let me wipe my butt with this fist-full of Benjamin’s? ”
He looked up at me with a smirk. “Somewhere in between the two?”
“I just mean, are we stuck here, looking for jobs to start from scratch, or do we have some wiggle room?”
“I have enough money put up that we can probably do nothing but travel the country for the next year comfortably. If we wanted to. We should probably start making plans for the future, because eventually the money will run out. I’d preferred to be settled by then, if you know what I mean.”
I pulled my glass of water closer and used the straw to swirl the ice through the water as I thought about it.
“I want warm weather, sunny skies. A small town where everyone knows everyone. Where time moves slow, and people aren’t always in a rush.”
He arched one brow. “It sounds like you want to live with The Brady Bunch.”
I laughed. “Not with them, but next door to them, yes,” I agreed.
He laughed and shook his head.
The funny thing was, I always watched The Brady Bunch as a kid, and even though the show was old and outdated by then, I wanted to be in their family.
I wanted a life like theirs. I wanted to live in a nice house with a mother and a father.
I wanted siblings and a dog. I wanted my dad to have some fancy office job where he needed to wear a suit every day.
I wanted to come home from school and find my mom in the kitchen, making cookies for an after-school snack, rather than coming home to an empty house and having to make myself microwaved pizza rolls.
I smiled at him. “That’s what I want.”
“What?” he asked, confused.
“I want my life to be like The Brady Bunch.”
His brows knitted together in confusion.
“I don’t mean I want a hundred kids or anything. I just want a normal life. I want a house we pour all of ourselves into, making it a home we can be proud of. I want to open my own bakery. I want children. I want…”
“A normal life,” he finished for me.
I nodded. “Exactly.”
“I want that too,” he said, reaching across the table and taking my hands in his.
“Yeah? You’re not worried that it’ll be boring after living the exciting life of a car thief?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Excitement is overrated. I’m ready to settle down and live a quiet life.”
I smiled. “So, kids?”
He nodded. “Sure, I’m down if you are.”
“And what’s your new career path?”
He shrugged. “The last thing I want is to sit behind a desk all day. I know you want Mr. Brady, but do you think Mrs. Brady could be married to a blue-collar man instead?”
I grinned and nodded. “Yeah, I think so. You know what they say about those blue-collar men…”
“What?”
“They’re good with their hands,” I told him, squeezing his hand.
“Oh, I promise they’ll get the job done,” he said quietly as he leaned in, pressing his mouth to mine.
We both pulled away shortly after the kiss started, when the waitress was back with our food. We let our conversation fall away as we dug into our dinner.
Even though the conversation stopped, my imagination didn’t.
I saw the two of us finding our perfect house together.
I could see us working to fix it up. I pictured our wedding day—I envisioned us having a small ceremony on the beach.
I saw my stomach swollen with our first child: a boy who grew to look just like his daddy.
I saw us living our lives together, happy and content.
I imagined opening my own bakery and having Oliver there with me, my dream becoming his as well.
I saw myself getting pregnant again, this time with a girl.
Having one of each, our family would be complete.
I could see us growing older together, raising our children, and enjoying every class play, every sporting event, and every big dance.
I could even see our kids going off to college to start their own lives, leaving Oliver and me behind to start on our next journey.
By the time we were done eating, I was already so invested in our lives together that it felt like we’d known one another for years rather than just weeks.
I wasn’t scared to take the next step with him because I knew it was exactly what I was supposed to do.
I knew he was the man I was always meant to be with.
He was my other half. The first portion of my life was over.
It was rough, but it led me to where I was supposed to be all along.
With him.
A happy future wasn’t promised, but things like that never are. If something is worth anything, it’s worth working for, and we were both willing to put in the work. The best things in life are free, but they’re worth more than anything money can buy.
Oliver came into my life like a burning meteor crashing to Earth. It was loud, dramatic, a little scary, and definitely exciting, leaving me with more questions than answers. But all the best things do. Moving forward, all you can do is trust that the universe is leading you in the right direction.