Chapter 40
ALEX
Iused to think that my big-picture story was a second-chance romance.
Ever since the divorce. Will our hero fall in love again?
Will his half-empty heart ever be full again?
Will he find the right person to love this time?
Fuck that. The heart has a mind that wants to expand, and every person you meet is a potential new teacher.
Every love story has a happily ever after if you look for it.
Ryder was the happily ever after for Nova and me.
Every woman I’ve been with, every friend I’ve ever had, my parents—they all taught me something about myself and relationships so that I’d know how to love Emilia.
She’s the best teacher I’ve had, along with my son.
Every kiss is the first of a million.
Every single day is another chance for romance with Emilia Stiles.
I will probably want to ask her to marry me many times, for the rest of my life.
But today is the day I do it for the first time.
It’s time to raise the stakes in this marriage plot.
Don’t get me wrong—I love coming home to my live-in girlfriend and her dog. So does Ryder. But now that I’m about to go into preproduction on my indie film with Shane, it feels like I need to come home to my fiancée. We finally settled on a new title for this love story. It’s called All the Stars.
And that’s why I brought Emilia and Ryder here to the planetarium.
Well, that and because it’s hot as Satan’s balls at the end of June, for some terrible reason, but it’s cool and dark in here.
And meaningful. I knew as soon as I got that speck of dust out of Emilia’s eye that I’d want to come back here with her again.
Someday when she wouldn’t run away from me.
When I could hold hands with her as we wander through the observatory and learn about the wonders of the universe.
I’m confident that she won’t run away from me today.
This show is thirty-five minutes long. We’ve learned about astronomy and dark matter and where we fit in the universe. We’ve learned about all the stars in the Milky Way, and we’re coming to the end of the presentation.
Ryder is sitting to the left of me. He knows what’s up, and so far, he’s keeping the secret like a champ.
I glance over at Emilia, to my right. She nudges her glasses up the bridge of her nose and then places her forearm back on the armrest between us.
Looking back up at the screen, I lift my hand and gently stroke the skin of that V between her index and middle finger with my fingertip.
She shivers. Her thighs clench together, as I knew they would.
And I can see them clenching together because she’s wearing jeans instead of that crazy pink skirt this time.
I stroke the space between her ring and middle finger now, all the way down to her wrist.
Moving my hand away from her, I reach inside my pocket. The classical music soundtrack reaches a crescendo and then becomes soothing again. And that’s when I slide a diamond ring onto her ring finger while she’s taking in a deep, calming breath and looking up at the domed night sky.
I could not have directed this scene—or her reaction—better.
The way her head subtly jerks my way and then tilts down to stare at her hand.
The way she lifts her left hand to examine it and covers her mouth with her right one.
Her widened, watery blue eyes as they meet mine.
The way she nods and grabs my face to kiss it.
The first of sixty-five million kisses.
At the end of the movie and the new beginning of our lives together.
“Yes,” she says into my ear. “Yes.”
Ryder taps on her arm, wanting to see the ring on her finger.
She shows him and then reaches across my lap to grab his face and kiss it too.
He still pretends to hate it when she does that, but I know he loves it almost as much as I do.
She’s the big bang. The big picture. The biggest dork we know. And every little magical thing that reminds me we’re made of stardust—old as the universe and new as each breath.
Miss Stiles is about to get married—eventually—Vega-style.