74 EVIE
E VIE
I started earlier by saying that sometimes I imagine my life divided into two sections, Before I Liked Autumn and After I Liked Autumn. You would think, given what happened, that I would’ve hated that time of year. But there’s one more thing you should know.
Just before I left London, and before he left for that final leg of the tour, Carter woke me up early, telling me that he wanted to take me somewhere.
That there was an old promise he’d once made to me and had yet to fulfill.
Together, we drove for hours on an early October day, leaving London for the English countryside, the rolling hills of Yorkshire Dales, the place he loved most in this world.
Over a couple of days there together, we walked in the woods, listening to the crunch of leaves beneath our feet, dressed in woolens and boots.
Just as he’d told me years earlier, the sunlight was a golden, magical hue picking up every detail, and we walked through trees that looked like slumbering princesses might be sleeping beneath them.
The streams and waterfalls were made fuller and more spectacular by the temperamental weather and enduring rains from earlier in the week, and a misty haze hung over the hills beside stone walls like magic.
He took me to the same field where he’d once stood with Jacob and his mother on the night we all, separately at the time, had looked up at the sky and seen the mysterious appearance of a star in the moon.
“Have I convinced you yet?” he asked me.
“To love autumn? Definitely.”
He turned me toward him. “To believe in us. For good this time.”
He had, of course. Though, honestly, I felt like it should have been the other way around. That I should have been the one convincing him. And I suppose we did have those moments, especially when I wasn’t sure he would ever forgive me.
But he did. And I hope eventually you can too.
“No one leaves this time,” I promised him. He’d reached out and picked a small length of grass, tying it around my ring finger.
“We just took a small detour, right?” he said with the warmest laugh.
“We’ve got this now.”
“Think she’ll like me?” he asked.
I nodded. “I think she’ll love you.”
We decided that day that we would make a life together, once and for all.
And I know we would have. But most important is this: I want you to know that he wanted to be in your life.
He loved you before he’d even met you, Lainey.
This isn’t my love story; it’s yours. And he wanted to be here, right beside you.