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My throat thickens, and something tells me his does too, by the way his throat bobs with his swallow.
“Nolan,” I whisper, tears rushing to my eyes.I know this already. Why is he bringing it up?
I feel so heavy suddenly. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but in a way I’ve never felt before. Like…like I’m sinking through the earth, on the verge of somehow falling into a new world—a universe—one there will never be any coming back from.
And here I thought I’d already fallen as far as I could fall.
He smiles wetly, and shakes his head. “What’s done is done. But this? This dock?” He spreads out an arm. “The whole time I built it, I thought of you. I pictured you…standing here, just like this. With those big brown eyes that never fail to suck me in and break me down, destroying me and humbling me and lighting me up all at the same time.”
I suck in my cheeks, and it takes everything in me not to look away.
I don’t want to.
I don’t wanna miss a second of this moment, of what he looks like, gazing back at me in a way no one’s ever gazed back at me. Like he sees me—all of me—storms and all.
“And I pictured Abby coming here. Visiting us. Maybe staying a few days.” His eyes redden, and a sob scrapes from my throat. “I know you’re young. Too young to be a parent, but I don’t just see right now when I look in your eyes, I see forever. I see the day you step into that role, as seamlessly and effortlessly as you stole my heart. Though with far less pushback from her, I’d imagine.”
I’m shaking—trembling—vibrating out of my skin.
He steps forward, cupping my cheeks, and he bows his head to mine. “Close your eyes. I’ll close mine too,” he whispers in a ragged hush.
So I do, and the air punches out of me, and he’s holding me, keeping me standing.
“I saw it that day on the cliffs. On our hike. When you stood on that bridge, and looked over your shoulder, and smiled.”
“Nolan,” I choke out.
“They say your life flashes before you when you die, but that day, it was the thought of losing you, that had all the what if’s and what could be’s flashing across my mind. I didn’t understand it then. I just knew I couldn’t lose you. It was imperative I didn’t lose you.”
Sniffing, I nod against him.
“I don’t know how I ever let you walk away that night we said goodbye,” he says, his voice breaking, the sound of it fluttering over my lips. “And while I know we needed to go through all that to get here, just know that I don’t plan to ever let you walk away from me again. Not unless you ask me to.”
“Never,” I whisper.
“I want that future with you. The one I saw that day. All the things I imagined. And I know you’re young—”
I grumble and he chuckles.
“—and it’s maybe too fast, seeing as we haven’t even been together officially that long—”
Blindly, I cup his scruffy cheeks, halting him mid-sentence.
“Out with it,” I whisper.
He swallows—I feel it—and then I hear the words, somehow, before he even says them.
“Marry me.”
My eyes open, but his are still closed, so I take the moment to stare at him—just like I did all those years ago when he stopped me that day on the beach. Just like I did in that room where we sat around a circle and shared all our regrets and hopes for the future. Just like I’ve done so many times when he either didn’t know I was looking, or when he pretended not to notice.
I bite my lip, wondering how this could possibly be my real life right now.
“Sky,” he whispers against my mouth, groaning when he feels my teeth there, pinning my flesh.
“It was that day on the beach, I knew,” I tell him quickly, and he stills. I don’t even think he’s breathing. “When you stopped me from walking up that cliff, and I turned around, and—” My voice cuts off, stolen by the emotions barreling through me.
His lashes twitch, but he keeps them closed, almost like he knows I need them closed in order to get this out there. He needs to hear this.
