Chapter 91
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
Harper
Song- Hook, Line he has enough to see us through and our future grandkids.
I might think about opening up my own firm here in Arizona one day. I might start writing something different. A paranormal romance, perhaps, something about soulmate curses, I always wanted to try my hand at.
"Eighteen years old," he says, ignoring me completely. "Right here. Back of this truck. You were asleep on my chest, just like this, and one went across the sky." His hand strokes slowly up and down my arm. "And I wished that this would be my life one day. You. Me. This truck. This sky. Forever."
I go still against him.
"And now look." His voice goes rough at the edges. "My wife is on my chest. My daughter is under my hand. My house is going up on that ridge. Nine years it took, but my wish came true, Harper." He presses his lips to the top of my head. "So don't you tell me they ain't real."
I can't argue with that. For once in my life, I don't even want to.
"Space debris," I whisper, just to feel him laugh.
"Wish-granting space debris," he murmurs. "Checkmate, sweetheart."
And then, as if the sky was waiting for its cue, a streak of silver tears across the dark above us.
A shooting star.
Ace squeezes me. "Go on, baby. Your turn."
I close my eyes.
And I wish. I wish for this. For him and me, happy, together, for the rest of our lives. And then I wish bigger. For every lifetime after this one. Whoever we are, wherever we land, whatever names we wear, let me find him. Let it always be him. The cowboy in the chute. The man under the stars.
Because there will never be an end to our story. There never was an ending, not when I left, not when he let go, not when the world tried to take us from each other twice. We just keep finding our way back. That's the whole story. That's the only story.
"What'd you wish for?" he asks.
"Can't tell you. Won't come true."
"Harper, I told you mine, and look how that turned out."
"Then I'll tell you in sixty years."
"Deal." His breathing slows. His hand stays splayed over April even as the rest of him lets go, and I lie there listening to his heartbeat under my ear, watching the sky wheel slowly above us.
They say the stars have to align for a love like this. Maybe they do. Maybe ours aligned the day a fifteen-year-old girl smiled at a boy in English class, and everything after was just the long way home.
But here's what I know now, unleashed at last from every fear that ever made me run: stars don't hold love together. Gravity does. And whatever sky I'm under, however far I drift, I will always find my way back to orbit around this man.
My sun. My center. My Acey.
In this lifetime, and every one after.
Forever.
The End.