Chapter 15 Love Me Back #2
I love you. I love you. I love you.
My heart’s bursting to tell her, but, instead, I ask her, “Will you be my wife today, Brooke?”
“Yes.” She takes my hand, still buried in her mop of hair, and brings it to her mouth, pressing the lightest kiss to my knuckles. “Please ask me again tomorrow.”
The production team was quick to not only bring Brooke and me supplies in the early hours of the morning, once we were strong enough to pull ourselves out of the shower, but they also sent in a cleaning crew to take care of the path of destruction.
Brooke and I, out of necessity alone, all but carried each other, our provided fluids, and a couple clean blankets up the ladder to the roof of Tink and attempted to get some rest. Though rest at the moment looks like watching the sunrise with my wife wrapped in a blanket and curled against me.
“Did you ever imagine we’d be doing this?” she asks sleepily. I’m hoping after the cleaning crew leaves and we face our Day Twenty-Five offer, we’ll find ourselves in bed for the rest of the day.
“Did I imagine listening to you throw up all night while I puked into a flower pot? Yeah, I always dreamed of it, but—”
She lightly elbows my gut, which is far too sore to take such treatment. “Owen, I’m serious. It’s been over a month and…”
I tuck an errant hair behind her ear, and when she clasps my hand to her cheek, staring up at me, it takes everything in me not to close the distance and kiss her.
I never thought I’d be thankful for what happened to us over the last eight hours or so, but everyday I’m fighting harder than the last against my physical attraction to Brooke.
I know if those boundaries fall completely, exactly where things will go, and as much as I want that with her, I can’t go there until I’m positive Brooke is on the same page with our relationship. That this marriage—we—are permanent.
“What I mean is…” Her thumb passes back and forth over my hand. Every nerve where she touches, suddenly alive. “Did you ever think you and I would… get to this place?”
She bites down on her lip, worried. It makes me want to laugh, and also, throw a party.
Preferably for two. Soon. Because this isn’t a question of where we’ll go from here or if the idea of us is even possible, but, instead, whether I knew without a doubt that this—she and I and forever—was always the conclusion to our story?
I reach down for her ring finger, twisting the band and running my finger over the familiar sapphire. “Do you know how long my Gramps and Gram were together?”
Brooke only shakes her head, obviously confused.
“They met when Gram was fifteen. Gramps was seventeen. They got engaged on her sixteenth birthday.”
“No way! Really? At sixteen they just… knew?” I watch as she catches up, that sixteen isn’t so young not to know who you want to spend your life with.
When tears fill her eyes, I can see how we’ve been working our way to this conversation with every moment we’ve shared since that day in the cafeteria when we bonded over dinosaur T-shirts.
“Oh...” She swallows slowly, blinking against emotion.
I want to say “clever girl” for finally catching up to me, but, instead, I kiss her ring finger. “Gramps put this ring on my Gram’s finger all those years ago and promised her forever.”
“This ring?” She looks at the ring with new eyes. Her lip trembles, so I nod and let my fingers trail along her mouth and jaw, giving her the time she needs.
“Did I ever imagine we’d be here someday?” I sigh, feeling the warmth of the sun coming up around us and a serene sense of gratefulness for where we’ve ended up.
It’s been an endless night, but a beautiful new day has finally broken through the darkness. Birds chirp, Woody rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tats just beyond the treeline, and all I can think is this is how it was always meant to be. Brooke was worth the wait.
“We were always going to end up here, Brooke. I knew then… I’ve always known.
And I would’ve given you this ring at sixteen if I thought you would’ve accepted it, but I wouldn’t change how this has played out, for a second.
I’ve imagined this… since I was sixteen and falling hopelessly in love with my best friend. ”
She’s crying in earnest now. I cup her cheeks and pray she’ll hear and finally, truly understand. “It was always going to be you, Brooke. You with my Gram’s ring—my ring—on your finger, and me loving you every day for the rest of our lives.”
“I’m… I’m afraid,” she whimpers.
“It’s okay. Tell me your fear, Love. I can handle it.”
“I…” Her hands clench mine. “I’m afraid of how much I want this. Of how I need you. Always in my life. With me…”
I kiss her forehead, her tear covered cheeks, her nose.
“I’m afraid of how much… I… I love you, Owen. Because, I do. I love you.”
She repeats those words again and again, “I love you. I love you. I love you,” like her soul’s known it all along and is bursting with the release of the truth. And on Day Twenty-Five of this crazy game we’re playing, I have no uncertainties, at all.