Twenty-four #2
“I would take you sick or healthy. You know that, right?”
He hesitated a beat too long.
“Peter.” My heart fell. “Please tell me you know that.”
“I—I do. I just don’t want you to have anything but healthy.”
“Why?”
His throat tugged on a swallow. He gently reached up to swipe a strand of hair behind my ear. “Because you’re my Sunshine Girl and I—”
I shoved his hand away. “Don’t bring up the stupid list right now. I’m being real.”
“So am I.”
“I don’t see how that has to do with anything.”
“You can’t have a beautiful life if you’re taking care of me.”
“Isn’t that for me to decide?”
He didn’t answer for a few long seconds, and when he finally did, his voice scraped. “It is, but I just want to wait for the perfect circumstances, I guess.”
“I don’t. You know better than I do that we aren’t guaranteed another moment. Every second is a gift. But you and I are spending all our seconds together preparing for things that might not even happen instead of just facing them together. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
He nodded.
“Plus, even if the stars do align for a second, they unalign a moment later. Nothing stays exactly the way we want it forever.” I shook my head, recognizing what he said earlier. “And a beautiful life has nothing to do with that list, Peter.”
He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes like he didn’t believe me.
“The only thing that list stands for is fully experiencing the life we’re given, you know?
Drinking in every moment every chance we get.
It’s about making sure we feel the sun on our faces and the wind in our hair and never let the monotony of life steal our joy.
It’s about doing things that push us past our limits just to say we did it.
But that’s all it is. And guess what? We can still do all that even when we’re scared. ”
He grabbed my hand up, kissing the top of it. “I know you’re right.” His brown eyes bore into mine. “I made you feel like I don’t love you. Like I wouldn’t choose you. I’m so sorry.” He blinked, flicking a tear down his cheek. “Nothing could be less true.”
My own tears returned with a vengeance. “I know.”
“Please forgive me.”
“I do. I forgive you.”
Leaning forward, we kissed, and a piece of my heart stitched back together.
“I was actually going to give this to you on your birthday.” He lifted the ring box again. “It’s the month after my next check-up.”
He was waiting for one more “all clear.”
Turning the box toward him, he opened it, looking down at the ring with a thoughtful frown as if he was considering something.
Gently, he ran a finger over the top of the ring, studying it.
Then his watery eyes met mine and my heart flopped with relief when I detected a flicker of a smile in them.
He whispered, “I want you to be my wife, Sarah.”
I nodded, urging him on.
His eyes flicked to the McDonalds arches not far from the car. “This is, without a doubt, the least romantic way I could ask you, but I don’t want to keep hurting you.” He lifted my left hand, swiping his thumb over my ring finger. Gently, slowly, he kissed the spot then his eyes met mine.
And I knew I’d always be captive to them.
Always swayed by his softness when he looked at me.
I knew he loved me. He always had.
And I loved him.
Oh, I loved him with every strand of my DNA.
“Sarah Elizabeth Dunn. Will you be my wife?”
I brushed my teeth, gazing at the shimmery ring on my finger in the reflection of the fogging bathroom mirror.
It was stunning. Peter had the diamond removed from my old ring and laid it in a different, more intricate band.
It had a darker, almost antique look about it now, and I was completely obsessed.
We’d been engaged for several months, but I still looked at it with awe and admiration.
Peter was in the shower, talking about something that happened at work with a client, and I only half listened, entranced by the fact that I was a fiancé.
Soon I’d be a bride and a wife then maybe a mother…
once we were ready for IVF anyway. My brain flitted around, thinking about my gorgeous wedding gown that was currently undergoing alterations.
“Isn’t that ridiculous?” Peter said, the scent of his spicy soap lifting in the air.
“Mmmhmm.” I said as I rinsed my brush and spat in the sink.
“I think that I should tell him…” His voice trailed off.
I tapped the end of my toothbrush against the sink, drying it, then dropped it in the holder. Pulling out my make-up bag, I prodded him, “Think that you should tell him what?”
He didn’t respond.
I gave a soft laugh. “Uh, hello? Are you still in there?”
“Yeah…yeah. Sorry.”
I frowned. His voice sounded funny. “You okay?”
“I don’t know.”
Abandoning my foundation on the sink, I moved to the shower and pulled the curtain back. Peter stood there, blinking repeatedly and rubbing his eyes. “There’s…spots in my vision.”
“Maybe you should get out.”
He nodded, turning off the water as I handed him a towel. Peter dried off and got out of the shower, wrapping the towel around his waist. He braced a hand on the wall. “I don’t know what is going on…my stomach feels like I’m riding waves or something.”
I frowned. Peter did get migraines so maybe he was having a bad one. “Do you have a headache?”
“No.”
“Lay down on the floor maybe. I don’t want you to fall.”
Expecting him to argue, fear slung through my chest when he instantly heeded my advice, going to his knees on the bathroom rug.
Carefully, he eased onto his back and then I witnessed the scariest thing I’d ever seen in my entire life.
Peter’s whole entire body went stiff, his back arching as a low, terrifying groan squeezed from his lungs.
I was saying things, shouting maybe, but he’d stopped responding.
Then full-body convulsions overtook him.
Instinctively, I grabbed his shoulders to stop him before I even realized what was happening. Then all the first aid training I had to take in order to become a massage therapist rushed through my mind. The pictures in my textbook resurfacing in my memory.
Peter was having a seizure.
With strength only adrenaline could provide, I rolled him to his side as I shrieked his name then scrambled for my phone on the bathroom counter and dialed nine-one-one.