by Meli Raine
Time to put life back together, better than ever.
“Are you okay?” Lindsay asks, pausing. I stop walking and look at her, my gut clenching.
In the sunlight, she’s more beaten up. Hospital lighting is harsh, but sunlight is the great equalizer. She must see something in my face, some part of my reaction I can’t hide, because she reaches up and touches her hair.
“I’m fine.” I mimic her, except instead of touching my hair, I pat my pocket. The little velvet box is in there, along with an important envelope.
Last night was a long night at Lindsay’s place. While she slept, insomnia gripped me. A man can do a lot of thinking in his girlfriend’s bed, her light breath warming his arm, her gorgeous self in a state of total trust.
A lot of thinking.
I have a plan.
A harmless little plan of my own.
We find a small café. I guide her to a private table, then go to the counter and return with two coffees and a box of assorted pastries. Lindsay peeks in the box and laughs.
“Planning a party? Who do you expect to eat all this, Drew? There’s enough for a dozen people.”
I admire the curve of her arm as she reaches up to brush her hair back from her face. She grabs an apple pastry and takes a bite, groaning with culinary pleasure.
I enjoy that, too.
As we steal these peaceful moments from the rest of our tumultuous lives, I wait. I know she’ll bring it up.
And finally, she does.
“Do you really think they’ll try to send me to the Island?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t go.”
“Then don’t.”
“They have so much power, Drew. You know them. They’ll find a way if they really want me gone.”
My body goes tight with a protective streak I’ve had since the day I met her. “We can stop them.”
“How?”
It’s suddenly very warm in this little café. Sweat breaks out where my collar meets my neck. I rub my palms on the tops of my thighs.
You can do this, Foster.
I can take out an Afghan warlord from hundreds of yards away, cool as a cucumber and steady as can be with a rifle and not break a sweat.
But the thought of asking Lindsay to marry me makes me overheat.
Yeah, marry.
“I have an idea.”
“Bring it on,” she says, her good arm waving with encouragement before she picks up her coffee and drinks some.
“Your parents keep holding the fact that they are your next of kin over your head.” I start to fidget. I hate fidgeting. My right leg bounces up and down like an eager puppy with a fetch stick in its mouth.
“Right.”
“What if you could change that?”
“Like, pick someone to have medical power of attorney over me? I think Daddy and Mom would -- ”
“No, I mean change your next of kin.”
“Drew, I don’t understand.” Her eyes are wide and searching my face. I haven’t connected the dots for her. My heart crawls into my throat, resting there, needing a short pause before making the final journey to the summit of Mount Ask Lindsay to Marry Me.
Fortifying myself with a few gulps of coffee, I drain my cup, set it on the table, then take her good hand in mine.
“I think you should marry me, Lindsay.”
Lindsay
“Did you just propose?” I did not hear that. I didn’t.
“Yes.”
I did hear it.
He did.
He said that. He said he wants to marry me.
“No,” I blurt out. Moving my hand breaks contact with him. I feel a wide wedge between us, getting bigger.
“No?”
“I mean, yes!”
“No or yes, Lindsay? There are two options and you’ve used them both within seconds of each other.” Is that sweat on his forehead? Drew doesn’t get nervous. Oh, my God is he nervous?
“No! I mean, yes! No, I mean, I don’t want you to marry me out of pity or because you want to win.”
“Win? Marrying you would be the best kind of win.”
“I’m not some trophy! Or a prize you get for outsmarting my parents!”
He’s stunned. “You think that’s why I proposed?” Drew’s arms cross over his chest, his chin tipped down, looking up at me under thick lashes, giving me a questioning look so smoldering, all I want to do is kiss him.
I shrug instead.
This really befuddled look pours through his face like a rainfall of emotion. Drew is so stoic most of the time – hell, all of the time – that it’s almost comical.
I laugh, anyhow, and then I start to cry softly. Salt in my tears makes all the cuts on my face sting.
“Let me do this properly,” he announces, reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket. What’s he doing? He couldn’t possibly have a --
A ring?
A tiny gray velvet box is in his hand, and he flicks it open with his thumb like it’s a lighter and he’s starting a flame.
Which he is.
Only with a diamond.
My mouth drops open. “Drew!” I gasp. “I saw this on your nightstand table that day. I remember. It was next to that ridiculous book about airplanes -- ” I clap both hands over my own mouth to stop the stupid from pouring out of me.
He drops to one knee.
Oh, my GOD.
“I said I needed to do this properly.”
“You came prepared,” I squeak through my open fingers.
“I came determined to win.” He reaches for my hand. “To win your heart, Lindsay. Forever.”
You ever realize that the world just continues marching on, second by second, regardless of your internal emotional state? That’s how it feels, breathing. Drew is on one knee. His hands are held out to me. One hand holds a box with a diamond ring in it, marquise cut, glittering like his eyes. Shining with love.
He’s begging me with those eyes. All of the love in the world is centered on me right now.
And I can’t breathe.
I’m holding my breath for all the good reasons. Every damn one of them. This is what joy feels like. This is what hope feels like.
I’ve known love. I’ve known happiness. I’ve known contentment, though only in slivers.
But joy? Joy has been elusive. It has been forced into hiding for so very long it’s not sure that there’s a safe place to come out.
Drew, before me, makes that safe space. It’s the air between us. It’s the look he’s giving me right now.
Pure joy.
Joy releases us. It gives us room. The sense of power that comes from being vulnerable cannot be measured. Joy lets us be our true self. Joy doesn’t judge.
And joy is right here, smiling at us both, telling me to say yes.
When joy gives you a suggestion – you listen.
“Yes,” I say, the word long and sweet, like the sun lives inside me and I’m opening my mouth to spread the light of love. Drew’s eyes glisten – he’s not crying, but now I am – and he takes my hand, so solemnly.
The ring slides up, over the knuckle of the left ring finger, settling in like it’s been there forever.
This is the part where people kiss, right? Where we hug and he picks me up and twirls me around in the air.
Where we breathe in each other’s fire and breathe out shared passion. Zeal. Zest for a life well lived for the next sixty years.
Right?
Instead, we’re deliberate. Achingly authentic every microsecond. Drew and I know the long, horrible road we’ve traveled to reach this point.
A point I didn’t see coming.
“I’ll marry you. We -- ” I’m about to say we have to tell Mom and Daddy, but given their plans for me, I’m not sure we should.
“That’s the part where we both win, Lindsay,” Drew explains, his grin widening. I didn’t think it possibly could, but it does. “We’re getting married now.”
“Now?”
“
Today.”
“TODAY?”
“Yes.”
“We can’t get married today! We have to tell Mom and Daddy...” I frown.
“Baby, you know exactly what they’ll do.”
I halt. “They’ll stop us.”
“Yes.”
“And try to send me back to the Island.”
“I won’t let that happen.” He leans in and plants a gentle kiss on my lips. “But marrying me today can make damn sure they can’t control you any longer.”
“You want to marry me so you can control me?”
“I want to marry you so I can make love to you.”
“Nice try.”
“What? I do.”
“We don’t have to get married to do that! Let’s stick to the topic at hand.” Sex has been the last thing on my mind, frankly.
Suddenly, it’s right there.
“But if we’re married, your parents can’t have any legal control over you anymore. They’re not your next of kin. I am.”
Next of kin.
“So you’re saying that getting married today would take away power from my dad and mom?”
“Yes.”
I punch him. Then I kiss him, a long, wet, slow inventory that I hope shares all the dirty little ways I want to make love with him, someday, forever and ever.
“But -- ” I say as our mouths separate.
He sighs.
“I told you it’s a harmless little plan.” He can’t say the words without smiling.
I snort. “You are crazy.”
“You’ll do it?” He grabs my hands and holds them in front of me like we’re already taking vows. “Marry me?”
I nod. “But I won’t obey you.”
His mouth twitches with amusement. “When have you ever?”
“You really are serious. Get married today? How?”
“Do you know where your birth certificate is?”
“No.” Somewhere in a filing cabinet at The Grove, I suspect.
He reaches into his breast pocket again, holding up an envelope, wiggling it like a fan. “I do.”
“You stole my birth certificate from The Grove?”
“‘Stole’ is such a judgmental term,” he says dryly.
“It’s a true term!”
He pretends to be philosophical, pressing his fingers against his chin like Freud. “What, exactly, is ‘truth’?”
“The truth is that I love you.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“And your insane scheme to marry me is brilliant!”
“I know.”
“So let’s do it.”
“Really?”
“You’ve always said you were a man of action. Prove it.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Worse.”
“Worse?”
“It’s a dare.”
The growl from his throat sets my heart beating faster. “Do you,” he whispers, pulling me in hard against his hot body, “have any idea what hearing the word ‘dare’ from your mouth does to me?”
“Show me.”
His throat moves as he swallows, eyes half-hooded and dark. “Let’s go back to my place and I’ll show you.”
I wince at the thought of going back there.
“No,” I say between kisses. “I have a better idea.”
He pulls back and gives me an evaluative look. He’s reading my mind. I let him.
“Let’s do it, then. Get married,” he says, nodding.
“Where?”
“Where else?”
“Vegas,” we say in unison.
Chapter 18
Drew
This isn’t how I envisioned our wedding, but I’m a realist.
And realistically, it was going to be a long shot that I could pull this off without Harry and Monica learning about our plans.
If anyone can do it, though, it’s me.
In the life we were supposed to have, our wedding would have been a society affair, me in dress uniform, a thousand or more politically-connected guests present at The Grove in an extravaganza the media would cover.
In the life we were supposed to have, my parents wouldn’t be dead – likely killed by Nolan Corning’s machine, it turns out, for reasons Mark and I are still trying to discover – and my sister, brother-in-law, and toddler nephew would be there, cheering us on.
In the life we were supposed to have, Lindsay wouldn’t be recovering from a gunshot wound as we drive to Vegas to escape her self-centered, oppressive parents.
But we don’t get to choose what life does to us.
Only how we react to it.
As we drive across the desert, through the long stretch to Las Vegas, Lindsay stares out the window, sunlight playing on the shadow of scars that mark her cheekbone. I can’t remove those. Can’t even cover them up. All I can do is use them as a reminder of a time when I had no power.
A time now long in the past. I will never be in the same position again.
And neither will Lindsay.
I know she thinks I asked her to marry me for all the wrong reasons.
What she doesn’t understand is that four years ago, I had this ring in my pocket. It was in my coat, outside in my car that night of the party. I’d planned to propose then.
All I did today was to right a wrong.
The final wrong.
And now it’s all right. Everything’s right.
Everything is perfect.
She spins the diamond around and around on her finger, the wind pushing through the open windows, her body as relaxed as it can be with her arm in a sling.
Lindsay turns to me and gives me a pensive look. “There’s one thing you should know before we get married, Drew.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t want to sleep with you.”
“Ever?” I feel like someone just threw a brick at my balls.
“No. No, no, no – not ever! No. I mean, someday. Of course I do. Maybe want is the wrong word. How about can’t? Or...not yet? I just...” She blinks hard. Her throat tightens, then moves with effort. Whatever’s going on inside her over this, she’s trying to communicate – and it’s hard for her. I can’t do anything that makes her trust me less.
But this is not your typical road trip conversation when you’re on your way to get married, is it?
“Hey. Hey. It’s okay, Lindsay. I’ll wait. You’re worth it. We’re worth it.” That’s the best I can come up with on the fly.
It seems to calm her down.
“I guess I’m trying to manage expectations. I’m overanalyzing, aren’t I? I do that a lot these days.” She raises the window and re-positions the air conditioning vents. I raise my window and the sound difference is enormous. We’re suddenly in a cocoon. It feels intimate.
It is intimate.
This is life.
“Do you really want to talk about sex right now?”
Her pause makes it hard for me not to smile.
“Yes,” she admits.
“Then let’s do it – talk, I mean,” I add in a rush. “Talk. Not do.”
“Are you as awkward as I am?” she asks seriously. “I feel like I need to be open about this.”
“That’s what we’re doing, Lindsay. Being real. Being open.”
“Okay.” She takes in a resolved breath. “Then I’ll be open. I want to have sex. I loved having sex with you. Loved it.” She blushes, clearly remembering.
I’m about to go out of my mind with lust. Controlling my breathing and blood takes effort. I just want to be close to her. And naked. And sweaty and tender and --
“I’m angry I haven’t been having sex. I’m just so angry about everything! And then I imagine having sex and I want to die.”
I was with her right up to that last sentence.
“Sex makes you think about dying?”
“Not sex with you.”
“Thinking about sex with other men makes you want to die?” This conversation suddenly makes me
irrationally angry.
“Thinking about what happened in your apartment does.”
“Got it.” I calm down instantly.
“I can see I’m upsetting you. I’ll stop talking about it.”
“No,” I say softly. “Yes, it upsets me. But it would upset me more if you felt like you couldn’t share parts of the true you with me. I’m here. I’m here to listen. I’m here to touch and heal with. Only when you’re ready, though.”
“That’s what makes this so hard!” she says, her body vibrating with frustration. “You’re patient and understanding and calm and rational and so damn perfect!”
“And that’s...bad?” Women. I really, really do not understand her.
“It is when I’m such a mess.”
I sigh and run a hand through my hair. My fingertips are ice cold. “I’m a mess, too,” I admit.
“You are?”
I nod.
“How?”
“I think it would be easier to tell you all the ways I’m not a mess.”
Her eyes light up. “That’s how I feel, too.”
“But no one shot me. No one made me parade naked in a room full of people – and on streaming television, covered by every major cable news channel, replayed over and over, still in the newspapers even now. No one violated me publicly like that, Lindsay. Not the same way. I’m not trying to compare what I’m feeling to what you’re feeling -- ”
“That’s just it, Drew – you can!” Her breathing goes shallow, her chest rising and falling, the conversation stressing her out. I want to tell her to stop, but this feels pivotal. We have two more hours to get to Vegas and it feels like this topic is the answer to the meaning of life.
“I would never try to compare.”
“I am not some special tortured snowflake! Don’t do this to me, too. Everyone’s walking around on eggshells with me. Do you know how alone I feel? How lonely? How different and unique? Those words really, really isolate. They turn me into some freak again. Unreachable and misunderstood. I can’t have you do that, too, Drew. Not you.” She starts sobbing, her chin tucked into her chest at an awkward angle.
How did we get from the topic of sex to this?
Doesn’t matter. I can’t continue driving while she’s crying, pouring her heart out to me. I pull over, the tires rolling gently to a stop. Within seconds I’m across the gear shift, holding her any way I can without hurting her more.
