He’s nearly asleep, and I’m not far behind him when he speaks. “By the way, I reserved the Little Stone Church for next summer.”
“You…what?”
“The Little Stone Church, on Mackinac? Where we kissed that first time? We’re getting married there next June. Soonest opening they had, or it’d be earlier.”
I can only smile sleepily against his skin. He knows me, god, so well. “I love you, Adam.”
“Love you more, Destiny Ross.”
Epilogue
The tiny chapel is just the right size for the wedding we’ve planned. Most of the people in attendance are actually in the wedding party. My mom, of course, who walked with me down the aisle. And Dad, who gave away Des. She was already crying just from that, and gave my dad a long, emotional hug. My sisters, my grandparents, Rose, Gareth, and my agent Rachel and her husband.
The wedding has been planned in total secrecy, so the paparazzi won’t know about this until we announce it. I’m giddy with the fact that we actually pulled off a secret wedding.
Dawson is standing to my left, my best man. He’s grinning like a fool.
Ruth, Grey, Lia and Lizzy, and—surprisingly—Rose Garret are lined up at the front of the church, Des’s bridal party. I’ve only got Dawson but he’s all I need.
After a short speech about and love and the sanctity of marriage, the minister asks us to exchange vows.
I go first. I’m speaking from the heart. “Des…I honestly never thought I’d get here, you know. In a church, getting married. And then I met you, and I just knew, even then, that I needed you, and that I needed to make you mine. So here we are, babe. I’m making you mine, forever mine. You belong, now. To me. With me. My home is yours, my family is yours, my life, my love, my future…it’s all yours.”
Des is barely containing her emotions. It takes her a few moments of deep breathing to collect herself, letting out a sigh through pursed lips, blinking her thick black lashes.
“I have a quote tattooed on my body. A Maya Angelou poem.” She blinks and breathes, and then continues. “‘The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.’ That was the one constant in my life, the aching need for somewhere to call home, for someone to call home. Until you, Adam, I…I honestly didn’t think it was possible. I was starting to think it didn’t exist. Love, I mean. And home. And then you jumped off that carriage and showed me how wrong I was.”
She has to stop again, lets go of one of my hands and wipes a finger under her eye, head tipped back.
“I don’t ache for home anymore, Adam. You’re my safe place. You’re where I be exactly who I’m meant to be, and I know you love all of me, the broken and the whole.”
I hear sniffles and sighs, and I don’t need to look out at the small crowd to know everyone is moved by her words, me most of all. My throat burns, and I have to swallow hard past the hot knot of emotion in my throat. I can’t look away from Des, from the tear-shimmer in her wide brown eyes, from the love pouring off her.
I almost miss the minister’s next prompt: “Do you, Torrence Adam Trenton, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, as long as you both shall live?”
“I do.” I haven’t taken my eyes off hers during the entire service. I’m not the least bit nervous, just incredibly happy.
“And do you, Destiny Lynn Ross, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, as long as you both shall live?”
She takes a deep breath, smiles. “I do. With all my heart, I do.”
The minister smiles at her addition. “Then by the power vested in me by the state of Michigan, I now pronounce you man and wife.” He takes our hands, joins them, and lifts them. “May I present to you, Mr. and Mrs. Adam Trenton!” I was sure to prep the preacher on how to introduce us, and I’m amused by my mother’s glare of irritation. She was the one who chose my name, and it’s always bugged her that I go by Adam, as much as it bugs me that she continues to refer to me as Tory. It’s a game, and this is my latest gambit.
We’re out the door, the sun shining bright in the blue sky. A beautiful white carriage is waiting, with two huge, glossy black Percherons stomping their hooves and snorting. The Grand Hotel looms up on the hill, colonnades marching into the distance, flags flying.
I can’t take my eyes off Des, her shoulders bare in the strapless white gown, the train flowing around her feet, the bodice cupping her magnificent breasts and lifting them proudly. I stand behind her and assist her up into the carriage, with Ruth at my side arranging her train so it doesn’t get tangled.
Ruth smiles at me as she finishes fussing with Des’s dress. “I’m glad she found you, Adam.”
I just shake my head. “I’m the one who found her, actually,” I say with a grin.
Ruth rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning. “Arrogant ass.”
“You know it.”
Ruth is on the step of the carriage, hugging Des, and they’re both whispering, crying. I turn and Dawson is there, his dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. He’s contractually obliged to keep it long for the role on the HBO original series he’s doing. It looks good on him. He grabs my hand and pulls me into an embrace, slapping my back.
“Congratulations, brother.” He pulls away and grins at me. “Married looks good on you.”
I laugh. “It’s been about four minutes, Dawson.”
He shrugs. “Best four minutes of your life, though, right?” He leans in and elbows me. “Or is that a different four minutes I’m thinking of?”
I shove him off. “Douche. You must be thinking of yourself.”
Grey is at Dawson’s side, listening to the exchange with an amused gleam in her eyes. “Hey, now. Don’t be knocking my man’s stamina like that. He can go for hours.”
Dawson stares at his wife. “Um. Okay then….thanks for that, hon.”
She shrugs and endeavors to look innocent. “Wasn’t four minutes last night, I can tell you that much. I’m still sore.”
“Grey. Jesus.” Dawson actually looks a little embarrassed, which is funny as fuck.
Des leans down from the carriage and grabs my arm and pulls me. “Come on, sexy. We’ve got a carriage ride to go on. You can measure dicks with Dawson later, after I’ve had enough of yours.”
And that’s my cue.
“All right then.” I walk over to hug my parents and kiss my sisters, and then I’m sitting beside my wife, my Destiny, my sweet and sexy Des, and we’re waving to our friends and family. We’ll see them a bit later for the reception at the Grand Hotel. For now, though, it’s just us.
After the crowd is behind us, the driver turns. “So. A tour or the hotel?” He asks with a knowing grin, having overheard the foregoing conversation.
“Actually, I was here three years ago and I was supposed to do a tour of the island, but I never went.”
“Oh no? What stopped you?” he asks.
“I met her,” I say, putting my arm around my wife.
He glances us. “Good reason, then. Well, you’ve got the right man for the job. My name is Dan, and I live here on the island year-round. I can probably tell you more about this place than anyone else, including some pretty freaky ghost stories, if you’re into that kind of thing.”
“Sounds good,” I say.
Des nuzzles into me as the horses lean into their harness and haul us up a hill. “Well, baby. We’re married.”
I kiss her neck. “You know, I’d never say this to Dawson, but he was right. The minutes since saying ‘I do’ have been the best of my life.”
She turns her head, and our lips meet. “Mine too.”
THE END
COMING SOON
FALLING AWAY
by
JASINDA WILDER
I push the weight up with my legs, straining, aching, and fighting the agony in my right knee. I manage to straighten my legs, and I desperately want to l
ower them and release the strain. I start to do just that…
“Hold it there for me, Ben,” Cheyenne says. “For ten seconds. That’s all. Ten seconds. You can do it, I know you can.”
But I can’t. I’m a fucking pussy, and it hurts. But I try. I shake all over, sweat sluicing down my face. I strain, and a growl escapes me as I fight the urge to let the weight go.
“…nine…eight…seven…six! Keep it up, Ben! Five more seconds, come on!” She’s kneeling beside me, her voice patient and encouraging as it always is.
My leg trembles, and the pain in my ruined knee is so bad I could almost cry. “I can’t—fuck, I can’t. I gotta let it go.”
I start to lower the leg press, but my knee gives out. And Cheyenne is there, catching the weight and lowering it. I slide to a sitting position, grab my right leg near the knee and lift it over the bench, and then collapse forward, elbows on my thighs, gasping.
The most pathetic thing about this? The press only has a hundred pounds on it. And I only managed two reps of ten. I used to be able to press over twice my bodyweight, six or eight reps of twenty each. Now, a hundred measly fucking pounds pushed twenty times and I’m out of breath, sweating, and my knee hurts so bad I don’t dare speak in case the tremor in my voice would show.
I feel her hand on my shoulder, and a white towel appears in front of my face. I take the towel, dab my face, neck, and chest, and then accept the bottle of water she hands to me.
“That was great, Ben. You’re making excellent progress.” She sips from her own bottle of water, another towel slung over her slim shoulder. She toys with her hair, a sleek blond braid hanging down her back. “Next time we’ll try for three reps, huh?”
“I barely managed two today, Cheyenne. Gonna take awhile to get to three.” I hate how defeated I sound.
She crouches in front of me, and my eyes go involuntarily to her gray-and-pink sports bra, visible beneath the white tank top, and then to her muscular thighs, encased in black knee-length stretch pants. I force my eyes back to her hazel-green gaze. If she noticed me checking her out, she doesn’t give anything away.
“Ben, you’re too hard on yourself. It’s only been a month. It’s going to take some time, okay? You have to be patient with yourself.”
“I know,” I sigh, and roll my head around my shoulders to loosen the tension. “It’s just frustrating to be so limited.”
She smiles, warm and understanding. Only the slight crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes give away the fact that she’s older than me by quite a bit. I don’t know how much, but enough. She has a daughter in college, so she’s got to be at least forty. But Jesus, what a gorgeous forty.
“I get it, Ben. I do.” She pats my knee, the good one. Is it me, or do her fingers linger a few seconds too long? “I went through it too, remember? I know what you’re going through, how hard it is. You can do this. You just have to be patient and stay the course.” She stands up, turns away and grabs two ten-pound hand weights from a rack.
She’s facing away, so I let myself eye her ass. Taut, all toned muscle.
Fuck, what’s wrong with me? She’s got a daughter in college, for fuck’s sake. She’s my physical therapist. I should not be checking her out. But yet, every time I’ve been here since being injured in the game that ended my chances at a football career, I check her out. I struggle to keep my eyes off her, especially when she’s looking my way.
Like she is now. Shit. She totally caught me staring. But yet, she doesn’t turn cold, doesn’t scold me, or glare at me. She just offers me the same kind, warm, patient smile she always has for me.
“Come on. Time to walk that knee out, mister. Come on. Up, up, up.” She grabs me by the hand and pulls me up to my feet.
Her hands linger in mine, just for a moment, but it’s enough to make me wonder. And then she’s putting the weight in my hands and gesturing to the track that leads around the perimeter of the gym. She walks beside me, twenty-pound weights in her hands, and sets the pace. She ignores the fact that I’m fighting to keep up, that I’m hobbling so bad it can barely be called walking.
And then a ripple in the carpet catches the toe of my cross trainer, and I trip. I lurch forward, hobble, and my bad knee twists and goes out from under me. I fall, the weights dropping from my hands. My knee crashes into the floor, and pure agony lances through my leg, shooting from toe to hip, throbbing so hard my gut tightens. I roll off my knee, clutching it, gasping, fighting the urge to curse a blue streak.
“Ben! Shit! Are you okay?” She’s kneeling beside me, helping me sit up.
Her hand goes to my knee, and she rips open the snaps of my track pants up past my knee, baring my hairy thigh. Her hands are warm and strong, flexing my knee, straightening my leg until I yelp.
“Fuck!” I pull free of her hold on my leg and lay back. “Fuck, that hurt.”
“I think we’d better call it a day,” Cheyenne says, a concerned expression on her face. “I’m worried that’s going to swell.”
“Yeah, no shit.” My voice is hoarse with the effort needed to breathe through the pain like a man.
“Can you stand up?” She’s taking my hand, pulling.
“Yeah, I can fucking stand, okay?” I snap, jerking my hand away.
“Fine then, stand up.” She backs away, not quite hiding the hurt before I see it.
I scrub my hand through my hair. “God, Cheyenne, I’m sorry. I’m being an asshole and you don’t deserve it.”
And just like that, the smile is back. She holds her hand out to me, and this time I take it and let her help me pull me to my feet.
“Okay, see if you can put any weight on it,” she tells me, not letting go of me.
I hobble, get my balance, and gingerly put weight on my knee. “Nope, nope, nope. Not happening,” I grunt, hopping as my knee gives, wincing.
“Okay. Lean on me.” She slides her slim shoulder under my arm and supports me.
She’s a lithe little thing, barely five-five to my six-two, and I outweigh her by at least seventy pounds, but she still manages to support my weight and help me limp out of the gym and to the locker room. I lower myself to the bench and straighten my leg, closing my eyes as the motion sends pain shooting through me.
“That set us back, didn’t it?” Cheyenne asks.
I nod. “Yeah, I think it did.”
She sits down next to me and buttons the snaps of my pants leg. When she’s done, she’s sitting just a little too close to me. “You need ice on that.”
“Yeah, I’ll ice it when I get home.”
“You have a ride?”
I shrug. “No, I’ll just take the bus, then walk, same as always.”
She frowns. “Ben, you can’t. You’ll hurt yourself worse.”
“Well I can’t drive with my knee fucked up, and I’m still working on teleportation.”
She snorts and smacks my shoulder. “Smart ass.”
“Better than being a dumbass,” I retort.
“Well, you’d be a dumbass not to just ask me if I can drive you home, then, wouldn’t you?”
I swallow my pride. “Cheyenne, would you mind driving me home?”
She smiles brightly. “Why sure, Ben, I’d be happy to.”
So I wait, leaning against the frame of the door as she wipes down the machines, shuts off the lights, and then locks the door behind us. She hikes her gym bag higher on her shoulder, and I, out of the instinct drilled into by my mom and dad, take it from her.
“Ben, I can—” she starts to protest.
“And so can I. I have a shit knee, but I’m not useless.” I hang the bag from my right shoulder and lean on the cane.
She lets me carry her bag, shooting me a smile that’s somehow different from the ones she usually gives me. This one is…more personal, somehow. Less politely professional, containing a note of…I don’t know what. I can’t read Cheyenne, most of the time.
She opens the back door of her F-150, takes the bag from me, and tosses it in. I watch her climb
up and in, and then around the truck to open the passenger door. It’s not a big truck, not jacked up as high as my Silverado is, but the step up and in is still going to be hellishly difficult. I set my cane—my stupid fucking cane—inside, grab the handle and the seat and lift myself into the seat using only my upper body.
“Nothing wrong with your core muscles, clearly,” Cheyenne says, a strange note in her voice.
I glance at her, surprised by the comment, but she focuses on putting the truck in gear and backing out. I have to be crazy, because it almost looked like she was blushing there for a moment. But that’s stupid. There’s no way a forty-year-old fox of a woman with a grown daughter would be blushing over a twenty-two-year-old kid.
I give her directions to my apartment, and the ride is surprisingly comfortable, no awkwardness. She tunes the radio to an XM country station, and “Cowboy Side of You” by Clare Dunn comes on. I surprise myself by knowing the lyrics. But then, you don’t grow up in Nashville, and now live in Texas, without hearing some country music, even if it’s not really your thing.
We pull up to my apartment, and she hops out, circles around and hovers near me as I slide out. God, I hate being a damned invalid, having her hover over me in case I fall. But a part of me, way deep down, kind of likes having her close, having her hover. Because it means she cares.
And shit, this last year has been fucking lonely.
I have to lean on the cane more than I’d like on the way up to the front door of my apartment, which, fortunately for me, is a ground floor. Cheyenne is beside me, not really hovering now, more just…there. In case. I unlock the door, shove it open and let bang against the inner wall. Hobble through, and glance back at Cheyenne, who hasn’t crossed the threshold.
“Hey, so…you want to come in for a second?” I ask.
She hesitates. “I…” Her eyes go to mine, and then she smiles. And it’s that other smile. Still bright and warm and genuine, but…intimate. I don’t know how else to think of it. “Sure, for a few minutes.”
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