by Ace Gray
I leave the safety of my bed to track down a bottle of wine. As I’m working the corkscrew out, I eye my wine glasses only to say forget it. I have a feeling I’m going to need the whole damn thing.
When I’m back upstairs, I stare at the bed as if it houses a viper. And I suppose it does, only the letter could be far more venomous. I wouldn’t really blame him if it was. We’ve made a mess of us.
I take a swig out of the bottle—let it drop back down to my thigh. Then I move to sit on the bed only to jump right back up. And take another drink.
The letter is a living breathing thing in the room with me. I want to tame it. I want to set it free. I just don’t know which reading it will do.
I sit on the floor, cross legged, and stare at it across the small gap to the bed. To the letter and the puffed-up comforter around it. What is heavy enough inside to puff my comforter up? I take another swig from the bottle then resume staring at the letter.
The letter that could contain any singular word in the English language. Or French, Spanish, Dutch, or Japanese because James speaks all four.
What if it contains the word love? Or forever.
What if it contains disdain?
And what the shit is heavy in there? That’s the question that makes me take a swig and lunge forward for the letter. I shove my thumb in and take advantage of the wine high to rip it open.
I regret it as soon as I do.
The jagged edges of the envelope seem like teeth. Ready to bite my hand. I’m going to get rabies. From the letter of my ex-lover slash current soulmate—that things will just never work with. Sweet Christ. I’m insane. And in love.
With James.
Who wrote me a letter.
I rip it out of the torn envelope, a small little wood box falls to the carpet. His words are left sitting in my hand. My thumb circles on the paper and I debate flipping it open. I even do a little—just enough to see his cramped writing littering the page. I remember the sharp ups and downs, scribbled in neat cramped lines. I don’t mean to, but I start to read…
Mina,
I’ve sat here staring at paper for three days and I have no idea what to say. I don’t know how you pour your heart out onto a page, I can barely manage a sentence.
But I want to.
I want to tell you how badly I screwed up with Jenna. She will forever be my mistake. Eight years of on-again and off-again will only ever feel like the sixty seconds in which she kissed me, and I lost you. I’m sorry for that. I’m looking for a word more inclusive and more apologetic than sorry. I’m looking for some way I might earn your forgiveness even though I don’t deserve it.
I’ve never deserved you.
Each time you smiled at me from the brewhouse doorway, each time you came baring gifts, each time you hugged me over your car console, I knew it. I knew it but I loved you anyway. There was no way to stop that feeling. I promise I tried. So many times.
I’m sorry you were caught in the crosshairs of that narrative too. I didn’t mean for that to happen.
I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.
If I were a normal guy, I would have told you then. I wouldn’t have waited two months to tell you now but I’m bad at all of that. Regardless, I love you Mina McLennan. I see a future with you. And that doesn’t mean I’m promising you the moon and all the stars of your favorite constellation. It just means that I want to wake up with you, and when I do, I want you to know that I choose to be with you.
It’s that simple.
I choose you.
I was wrong before, to ask you to marry me when you were pissed. What can I say, I was scared. I knew I was losing you and I knew why. I knew I deserved that fate and all I wanted was to hold on.
That doesn’t mean that I didn’t really want it. Really want you. I did.
I do.
And I’ll say that again if you ever give me a chance. In front of our family, our friends, a judge. I’ll say it to anyone that will listen. I’ll tell them that your bottom lip is more plump than your top, that your left eye is more gold than your right. I’ll tell them that your fingers fit laced perfectly into mine. That you see the good in everyone, even the quiet boy with Croakies in the corner.
I’ll tell them that you saw me.
That you still do and that every day I try to be that man. The one worthy of being seen through your eyes the way only you see the world.
I’m not sure I ever will be, but will you give me the chance to try?
I have no reason to hope, no reason to believe you will, but I have to ask you, will you marry me?
Be my wife, Mina. Not because it’s the way happily ever after is supposed to go but because when I think about grabbing my coffee mug and heading to work ten years from now, I want to know I’m leaving you in bed. I’m carrying your mug to the brewhouse. I want to know that my coffee cup was the first real thing my future wife gave me.
I want to know that my heart was the only thing she ever took.
Tears are streaming down my face. I don’t know when they started, and I don’t know how to make them stop.
I know what’s in the box now and my fingers tremble as I reach for it. The slick cut wood slides against the pad of my fingers. When I pull on it, the lid pops open like it’s a wood lighter, only the shine inside is so different than fire.
A single sob shakes my entire skeleton.
The ring is gorgeous in its uniqueness. It has a simple silver band and a large center stone, only it’s not a single stone—it’s closer to ten. Once I count them, I close my eyes and suck in a deep breath. Thirteen, my lucky number. Some small, some larger, all patch-worked together to make a glittering circle. I want to say yes just so I can wear that ring.
But I can’t.
I set the ring down on the floor and lay on my stomach to face it. I wipe the ever-present tears from my cheeks then let my chin rest on the back of my hands.
It’s almost too easy to picture the life that goes along with that ring. I can see James gently brushing a singular finger up my ring finger when we have coffee, when my hand is wrapped around a beer. I can see our hands loosely entwined as we hike through some disc golf course. Him learning how to paddle board.
The little vignettes are so enticing but they don’t tell the whole story. I can picture that ring on my finger as I wipe away the tears that come pre-packaged with James. The glint on it beneath my kitchen lights when I have to write the next letter about how he hurt me. Me staring at it as the freedom in our relationship turns to simple distance. When I cause instead of cure the panic attacks.
When we self-destruct. Again.
I can’t live through that. Then again, I can’t live without him. I haven’t ever done a decent job at it. Every single minute that he wasn’t in my life, I missed him. Even when I was furious with him, even when I was thanking him for being a dick because it helped me find me, I still thought constantly about him.
I roll away from the ring and onto my back, leaning up just long enough to take a deep drink out of the wine bottle.
If I’m honest with myself, I want to marry him. More than anything. I feel at home in the moments between us.
I just know it’s not a very good idea. In between all the goodness, there are two people who aren’t comfortable being vulnerable. Who run instead of face doubt head-on. Who hurt each other just as much as they heal.
How can he want to marry all of that?
I take a deep breath. That is the question I need answered. That is the question I want to ask him. I sit up and drink a heck of a lot more of that bottle of wine before getting up and getting dressed. One glance in the mirror is all the confirmation I need to know I look like hell, but I don’t care. If he thinks he wants to marry me, then he’s gonna deal.
At the last moment, I remember to grab the ring off the floor. I can’t bring myself to put it on. I already suspect it’s a custom piece, if it fits perfectly, I’ll know. I’ll know, and I won’t be able to keep a level head about this.
I won’t be able to say no.
And I’m pretty sure I need to say no.
I focus on my breathing as I ride my bike toward his house. One inhale for three pedals, one exhale for three. I can’t walk, I need the answer faster than that. I try not to think about how I need to see him faster than that too.
When I get to his house I all but jump off, ditching my bike against the railing. But then my feet freeze. I forget what I was going to ask him, why I needed to ask him in person. I forget why the hell I’m over here when I haven’t made up my mind. That he kissed her…
“Took you long enough,” James says from the top of the stairs.
He’s wearing his oldest sweatpants, ones I remember from our ski trip. Ones that have a story behind them. Ones that remind me what it’s like to collect little bits of James’ past. And what a jerk he can be when he’s hungover. The mix that always comes with him, the tumult of everything good and wonderful with everything awful, is all consuming. I haven’t even been able to process how damn good he looks in them.
He takes the stairs two at a time down to me, and before I can think or speak or even breathe, his lips are on mine. The shape of my obsession tumbling with each kiss and caress. His kisses are so uniquely his just like everything about James Larrabee. His tongue presses against my lips, begging for entrance. I let him in on instinct and instinct alone and he takes advantage, dancing with me.
Good Christ I love kissing him.
When we break away, I sigh as I reach for the railing, trying to clear my head and remember the train of thought that brought me over here in the first place.
“You’re not wearing it.” James is staring at my hand.
“No,” I say softly as I retrieve it from my pocket and hold it out for him.
“So that’s your answer?” He takes it in his fist and closes his eyes. I can still see how that rips at him.
“No.” As soon as I say it, I realize how that sounds. “I mean, I haven’t decided yet.”
“Then why are you giving it back to me?”
“Because I don’t want to marry you for a ring. Not even one as beautiful as that one.”
“But you do want to marry me?”
I hate the hope that trickles into his voice.
“I don’t know, James.” I sigh. “This,” I gesture between us, “isn’t easy. I need to know why you’d sign up for that. We run, we hide parts of ourselves, we fuck each other up, and I’m trying to understand why you’d tie yourself to that.”
“Because I will take you any way I can get you,” he says simply. “I never thought marriage would be easy. Hell, I never thought I would even want it. I figured I’d find someone that I was comfortable with and we’d move in and play house for as long as it suited the both of us like Kurt Russel and Goldie Hawn. But then came you…”
He sighs and knots his hair at the nape of his neck before he sits on his step. I turn to sit beside him.
“I want to make promises to you. Ones about loving you and forever. I don’t care who hears them, as long as you feel them in your heart.”
“And you can just look past all the shit?”
“I said I didn’t think it would be easy. That I never thought it would be.” He reaches for my hand and brushes his knuckle down my ring finger. It feels even better than I imagined and sends a shiver down my spine. “I love you because you aren’t easy.”
This isn’t good. His words are great—no, closer to amazing. They’re going to make me forget. The pain then, the betrayal now. All the reasons I should say no.
“Tell me, Mina, do you forgive me for before? For Jenna?”
“Yes,” I say it without thinking, my heart having an answer that my head hadn’t figured out yet. “I guess I do.”
“You’re not sure?” He reaches up and the same knuckle that brushed my finger, brushes my bottom lip.
“No, I am. I just didn’t know until you asked me.”
He smiles as his eyes fall to the ring in his hand.
“Then I have another question.” He grabs my hand and slides the painfully beautiful ring into place. It fits perfectly and I swallow the giant knot in my throat. I know what’s coming next.
“Mina McLennan, will you marry me?”
The story continues in All The Letters I’ve Ever Read
Handwritten & Heartbroken Duet book 2
preorder available here
releases February 27th, 2020
Ace Gray is a best selling author, self-proclaimed troublemaker and connoisseur of both the good life and fairy tales. After a life-long love affair with both books, she undertook writing the novel she wanted to read. Ten books later, she’s gotten to live in the world of billionaires, twisted murders, and sweet small towns. She’s made her heart race both with suspense and serious swoon and wouldn’t trade one minute, one word of it.
When she’s not writing, she owns a taco truck in a ski town in Colorado even though she can’t cook a lick (that’s all her husband). She loves paddle boarding, snowboarding, camping, basically anything outside… and hosting dinner parties (though she’s only in it for the drinks). Oh, and of course, writing more words.
Ace is the author of Strictly Business, Bad For Business, Family Business, Twisted Fate, Twisted Death, A Twisted Love Story, Twisted Secrets, Of Smoke & Cinnamon: A Christmas Story, Pretty Young Things, All The Letters I’ll Never Send You and All The Letters I’ve Ever Read. These titles are available on Amazon.
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