by Eden Butler
In films, when a couple reunites, the music stirs and stretches, crescendoing until the lovers embrace and kiss and do all the things that require the screen to go dark and the theater you’re sitting in to grown still and silent save for the sniffling of the audience. But we weren’t in a film. We were in a crowded train station staring at each other as if one blink, one uttered word, would somehow fracture reality and spin us back into the realization that we were dreaming.
But we weren’t dreaming and Garreth wasn’t motionless, didn’t rely on that cane, tossed it aside as he took limping steps toward me. Towards me! And there I stood waiting, always waiting, feeling like I’d gone away from myself, too stunned, too shocked to do much more but exhale when he reached me, when he reached out and touched my face.
“Garreth?”
He didn’t let me ask him how he’d gotten here. He didn’t explain where he’d been all this time and how he’d managed to meet me on our platform. The only thing Garreth seemed of a mind to do was hold my face between his hands and lean down to kiss me.
I was swept up in a quickening of sensation; something wild and raw that I did not recognize and yet felt so real and so utterly, perfectly sensible. He kissed me, and I felt myself responding, kissing him back, even as my tears spilled down my face and my heart hammered in my chest like a body being brought back to life. His warmth, his smell, his lips, his kiss, removing all doubt, fulfilling all hope, for now and forever and for always.
“Garreth,” I finally whispered when he’d broken apart enough. “Oh, Garreth.”
“Hush now, Miss Ada,” he said, silencing me with another kiss, this one sweet and full of promise. “Hush and kiss me again.”
And so…I did just that. Right there in the middle of the Pleasant Street station. Right there on Platform Four, where my mama had warned that folks would watch and talk. Let them, I thought, jubilantly. The devil take them for whatever they thought and said about me.
I didn’t damn well care.
My Garreth had come home to me.
EPILOGUE
Garreth snored. It was a whirl of sound that was labored, mildly amusing and the noise of it floated across my bare shoulder, down to the dip of my spine as he slept next to me.
We fit together like puzzle pieces, pressed firm, bodies still sticky from sweat on a bed that was too small for our married student housing apartment. I didn’t care if we’d been assigned a cardboard box. I didn’t much care about anything at all, except the heavy weight of my husband’s body pressed against mine and the low, solid noises he made as he slept.
“Three months,” I whispered, twisting the gold band around my finger. No force on Earth could pull the smile from my mouth. I was punch drunk in love and it had only been three months I’d been his bride. Such a short time. Some days, after all those months of waiting, it felt like forever. Some days I woke worried, nervous that I had never left the platform, that this was all still a dream of wasted hope. That Emma had never driven her brother the six hundred miles from New Orleans to meet me at the station.
“He insisted, the dunderhead,” she’d told me, not remotely as annoyed as she pretended to be when Garreth had let me go long enough for his sister to greet me.
“And you didn’t say no, did you then?” The sparkle in Garreth’s eyes had made his eyes clearer, bluer, if possible.
“No, poppet, I didn’t.”
Emma had let us be, for a time, but we couldn’t have stayed on that platform forever. Not with the crowd gawking and Garreth’s busted knee—shrapnel injury that wouldn't be crippling him forever—aching something fierce.
Not once did he stop touching me. Not on the drive over to the farmhouse. Not while Mattie and Hannah ordered wine and bourbon from Joe’s and we celebrated like it was the end of time. Not while the entire block had used my returning soldier as excuse enough for a belated end-of-the-war party that went on until the roosters began to crow. We’d excused ourselves from the crowd. There had been too many people, too many questions and I couldn’t bear, yet again, to hear how Garreth had spent weeks and weeks unconscious in some elderly German woman’s attic, barely alive, unable to send word that he hadn’t been lost. So, we stole away from the noise to hide in the hay loft with Uncle Bleu’s milk cows watching us, scrutinizing every kiss, every whisper, every touch.
“I’ll never want to leave you,” Garreth admitted, tucking me closer onto his chest. He’d kept his fingers at the nape of my neck and his mouth against my forehead. “Not ever, love.”
“So don’t.” He tugged me closer, holding my face still as I moved onto one elbow to look down at him. “You wanted an adventure and I was about to start mine. So why don’t you come along? You can go to school as well. We can stay in dormitories next to each other and…” but Garreth’s head shaking stopped me, had me frowning. “Why on Earth not?”
“Because, Miss Ada,” he said, sitting up to push me onto my back, pressing his long, lean frame against me as the hay pillowed around my head. “I’m of the mind to keep you with me always. I wouldn’t like laying all alone in some small bed, wondering what you’re up to. I want you by me. Today, tomorrow, for as long as you’ll have me.”
“But that means…” He distracted me with a kiss, mouth against my neck, fingers threaded in my hair. “You want…”
He made a mess of my hair just then, tongue and touches a blur of activity that I could not, for the life of me, find cause to fuss over.
“Answer this, love,” he said, sliding closer until I could only see his lovely face and smell the sweet scent of his breath. I lifted my eyebrows, a silent question in that expression that broadened his smile. “Big wedding or small?”
“Garreth,” I whispered, eyes blinking as he watched me, wondering how I’d gotten so lucky, or if I’d ever stop believing this was a dream, or if it was merely a dream with no end.
He didn’t answer, not immediately and as he bent closer, quieting my low muttered “Yes,” I swear I heard him whisper, “The loveliest.”
The End
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My biggest appreciation and gratitude to all the ladies involved in the Legacy Falls Romance anthology. I am so grateful for your patience and understanding as the “Great Flood of 2016” took over our lives and complicated our already busy schedules.
To my wonderful editor, Sharon Browning and my “Sweet Team”, thank you for all your hard work and devotion. I can publish nothing without any of you!
Finally, thank you to the men and women who have given their lives and hearts to the service of our country. Especially to the men of Easy Company and the brilliant way in which they served and sacrificed with honor and grace. They just don’t make men like you anymore.
ABOUT THE CHARITY
A portion of Platform Four will go to The Gary Sinese Foundation, which serves our nation by honoring our defenders, veterans, first responders, their families, and those in need.
This is done by creating and supporting unique programs designed to entertain, educate,
inspire, strengthen, and build communities.
To donate, please visit the foundation’s website: https://www.garysinisefoundation.org/donate
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eden Butler is an editor and writer of Fantasy, Mystery and Contemporary Romance novels and the nine-times great-granddaughter of an honest-to-God English pirate. This could explain her affinity for rule breaking and rum.
When she’s not writing or wondering about her possibly Jack Sparrowesque ancestor, Eden patiently waits for her Hogwarts letter, edits, reads and spends way too much time watching rugby, Doctor Who and New Orleans Saints football.
She is currently living under teenage rule alongside her husband in southeast Louisiana.
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_Butler
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