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CadburyFunny: Nearly there. So excited! Had near-cat-versus-bouquet-incursion but yours truly totally saved it with her mad Jedi skillz.

CadburyFunny: Cat emoji. Lightsaber emoji.

Me: Um, yeah. Things not to include on your vet school apps…

The memory wipe had worked. Ellie had woken up on Ethan’s couch the following morning with a splitting headache, the sudden desire to switch her career path to veterinary school and the memory of getting lost and falling out in the corn maze during the storm. Piper and Meera had barely been phased by our absence. Apparently, River had been to visit them, too. I was so going to kill him.

I checked in with Ellie daily, probably to the point of being obnoxious, and Ethan had promised me we would drive down to Austin every weekend to spend time with my family. I’d been nervous on the first visit, but Ellie now believed Ethan and I had reconnected when he came to see me play a gig. Although I couldn’t be sure how much to read between the lines and anxiety gripped me each time I stared down at those three little blinking dots, waiting for her texts to appear, I was pretty sure she was coming around to the idea of him.

“You ready for this?” Ethan pressed our joined hands to his heart. He’d removed his jacket, rolling the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows.

I traced my index finger over the infinity symbol he’d gotten tattooed on his forearm just above his wrist cuff. The elvish script neatly obscured my claiming mark, curling around and back again until the lyric formed a closed loop.

Love is not surrender. Love is earned.

I’d already started getting calls from agents, wanting to know when Daisy Addiction would be performing again. My bandmates had been found alive and unharmed in the back of a mobile home an hour outside of Austin. Tracers had moved them to a closet in the back of Jake’s apartment and modified their memories before calling in a tip for the police.

Since it looked like Daisy Addiction would be taking a break for the next few months while they recovered, I was considering picking up a few open mic nights on my own. Maybe writing some songs for acoustic. I felt alive for the first time in months, like the world was mine again to explore. Daisy Addiction would be back. In the meantime, I would spread my wings.

I drew Ethan’s wrist to my lips.

“Yours.” A single word. Five letters I’d penned around the petals of the daisy tattoo he’d once drawn on my arm as we stood separated by miles. And now I would be his. Forever.

Rising, I tugged Ethan to his feet, twining my arms around his neck. “By tonight we’ll be out at the cabin. Just you and me, listening to the sound of the waves and the cicadas as we watch the sun set out over Lake Buchanan.”

“And you’ll be mine,” Ethan breathed against my lips, gripping me by the waist as he held me in place. Our tongues met, the kiss quickly turning heated.

A cough sounded from behind us. Piper, Meera and Ellie stood waiting, my sister in a silk blouse, heels and a skirt. She handed me a bouquet of blood-red roses and soft white daisies, tied with a trailing red bow.

My laidback aunts, who had never imposed a curfew and had been the ones to help when I streaked my hair every color of the rainbow, for once had been surprised when we had announced we were engaged and getting married at the end of the month. Piper had privately called to ask if there was anything else I needed to tell them. (Which, no, there wasn’t.) But they’d quickly recovered, and Meera had gotten ordained online so she could marry us at sunrise over the lake.

Now Piper chewed her lip, staring at my head. “Okay, no judgement, but—"

Meera elbowed her. “You realize when people say no judgement, it’s just so they can be super judgy.”

“They’re just—”

“I think they’re cute. Quirky. Let’s be real. Were we ever really expecting ice sculptures, boutique dress fittings and cake tastings with this one?”

“Okay, I’m just going to come right out and ask. Is this like a Halloween thing?” Ellie reached up to adjust my headpiece, smoothing my veil so it fell over my face. “We all get the blood-red Docs and the skulls—”

I narrowed my eyes, which Ellie, of course, ignored. “I feel like I should maybe be insulted by that—”

“—but you don’t even like cats. I’ve always seen you as more of a dog person.”

Our eyes locked, my heart seizing for one terrible, endless second. And then Ellie blinked.

“Did things just get really… weird?”

Ethan slipped an arm around my waist. “You’ll have to excuse her. Blair’s doesn’t open until six and someone can’t function without her chocolate doughnut fix—”

“Um, you know I'm standing right here?”

He smirked, reaching up to adjust the little veil I’d hot-glued behind the black cat ears I’d worn the Halloween when he’d kissed me three years before. The night that had started it all. “And as for the cat ears, this is kind of our anniversary. Ready, Daisy?”

In answer, I threw my arms around his neck and let him spin me in a slow circle.

Ethan