She’s been catching me up with her life, on how come she decided to move here and she’s been telling me all about all the things she remembers, all the things I forgot about us.
We had just a week together, but there’s so much history between us, so much love.
I’m so fucking in love with her, it’s downright scary.
Standing under the hot jets of the shower with my entire destiny held in my arms as she sniffles into my chest, I truly finally understand why she means so much to me and how come I missed her so much.
We’re so emotionally exhausted right now, we can barely breathe and Kenna is shaking so much, not even the scalding water can make it stop.
I hug her tighter as the soapy suds wash away from us.
I feel my body start to respond to her again. My cock growing hard and thick between us.
My body has been absolutely apathetic for the last five years, I thought it was because of my injury, that there was a physical reason I couldn’t be bothered to even take myself in my own hand. Turns out it was my heart that was sick. So sick missing her that no one else, nothing else could do. Life was completely gone out of me.
And now… now the constant ache in my chest is gone and even if I’m not sure I even know what any of this means, I can’t stand to be away from her.
I want to make love to her again, over and over, until time stands still around us, and all the things I forgot no longer matter, but I don’t want to overwhelm her with my desire for her.
She’s so small, so mine.
I need to take care of her like I need my next breath.
And to think I came so close to losing her forever, even before I could find her again. She told me she moved here to start a new life and finally forget me and here I was all this time in the one place on earth she was too emotional to come up for a visit after what her scumbag of a father put her through.
And now here we are. Together.
Life is fucking crazy and thank God for that.
I finish rinsing the conditioner from her curls, then I turn off the water, pick her up and step out of the shower. I quickly dry us off and then wrap a big towel around her and throw a pair of shorts on.
We are both quiet as I carry her into the bedroom.
I tug the covers from my bed and slowly lower us both to the mattress.
I kiss her shoulder, curling myself around her, my forehead down on hers; our closeness as easy as breathing and so perfect, so natural it humbles me, it astounds me, it makes me want to bottle this moment up forever.
“We are going to be okay,” I tell her and I know it’s true, the words pouring from me as a sense of déjà vu envelops me. “This is you and me and I know we’re going to be forever. I’m never letting you go.”
Kenna blushes and smiles, her eyes bright in the duskiness of the sunset’s light coming through the window.
She strokes my face, her fingers softly raking through my beard. “You said that once before,” she murmurs.
“I did?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes, when you…” she trails off and looks away.
I frown.
When I…? When I…
And then I see it as clear as day ripping through my mind like a bolt of lightning, a flash of that ring.
The one with the inscription.
When I… proposed?
I look down at her.
Everything is suddenly making even more sense, though I still don’t remember.
That ring…
I had thought it was more like a symbol of things I had once wanted, it didn’t fit my M.O., I’m not that sentimental, but I had no other explanation for having ordered it.
It would burn in my hand whenever I held it.
I could barely look at it.
And yet…
And yet, I kept it.
All these years, I’ve kept it…
My mind races as I clutch Kenna closer still.
I see myself lying in that hospital bed, a hand to my chest as the ache started when they asked me… when they asked me if I had someone, if there was someone in my life and I said no.
But it wasn’t true, was it?
I had Kenna. I had everything.
I didn’t know it, but even then I could feel it…
“I’ve got something to show you, babydoll.”
Her head lifts from my chest. “You do?”
I nod. “Something that belongs to you,” I explain and I stand up.
She sits up, tucking the towel around herself, her eyes following me as I walk to my dresser.
I bend to open the last drawer and pick the little box that’s been hidden away for years.
I open it, pick up the ring, and hold it in my palm before I make a fist around it.
I walk back to the bed feeling lighter.
I sit on the edge and pull her closer.
I take her hand into my free one, turn it palm up and let the ring drop on it. “This is yours, babydoll.”
Kenna gasps, staring down at the engagement ring; her eyes brimming with tears again.
She looks up at me and shakes her head, her lips trembling; she looks so vulnerable, I want to wrap myself around her like a blanket, like a shield, and never let go of her.
“But you don’t remember me, Wyatt,” she says, her voice hitching.
“It doesn’t matter. This has always been for you. I just know it. You are in my heart, baby. It’s like I said: we’ll make new memories and they will be wonderful, you have to believe me… but these feelings we share, they go beyond time. There’s no past and no future. There’s just you always. Just us. Please wear this and be my wife, Kenna.”
She smiles through her tears, her hands shaking. “You are actually proposing?”
I grin at her. “Yes…”
“You are crazy.”
“Probably… but say yes to me.”
She laughs. “Yes, God help me I must be crazy, but yes, Wyatt.”
“Thank you, babydoll.”
I pull her into my lap and kiss her deeply.
When I let her come up for air, her lips are swollen and she’s looking so impossibly beautiful I have to restrain myself not to fuck her right this moment.
Not that I don’t mean to, but first things first…
“Give me the ring, Kenna. I want to put it on your finger.”
She smiles up at me and then down at it, she looks sweet and dreamy right now and I’m fucking proud of myself, that’s how I want her to look for the rest of our lives.
“Do you like it, babydoll?” I ask.
She grins, nodding. “I love it, Wyatt, it’s so beau— oh my God!”
Her eyes widen as she studies the ring more closely and then big tears start to roll down her cheeks, each and every one of them squeezing like an iron band around my chest.
“Love, why are you crying? What’s wrong?”
She turns the ring around and tilts it a bit until the inner side’s showing.
The engraving…
“To the edge of eternity,” I murmur. “Do you know what it means, baby?”