Page 62 of Forever

“Nothing. But we haven’t really spoken about it since the night I proposed. Or our plans. We haven’t even told Jacob.” I knew she’d been excited to tell him. Before she’d been kidnapped. We had been on the same page. We’d both been excited. And now it felt like we kept taking steps backward.

She pressed her lips together. “I want to tell him.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s do it tomorrow.”

“Yeah?” This felt like a good step.

She nodded. “Yeah.” She looked over her shoulder at all her old clothes and then back at me. “But before you get any ideas in your head, I need to say one thing. I can’t marry you in December, Matt.”

That had been our original plan. A wedding right before Christmas. Instead she’d married Miller on Christmasday. Did she think that marrying me in December would be a betrayal to Miller? Because her getting married to him on Christmas certainly felt like a fucking betrayal to me. But I swallowed down the words on the tip of my tongue. “How about November then?”

“Next November?”

I shook my head. “This November.”

“November is in just a few days, Matt.”

“You already have a dress.”

She laughed. “I doubt that dress still fits me.”

“Then you can get it altered.”

“When I said soon, I didn’t mean next month.”

“Then what did you mean?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

I was pretty sure if I let her have her way, she’d just stay engaged to me forever. And that wasn’t okay with me. She was always meant to be Brooklyn Caldwell.

“Let’s talk to Jacob about everything. And then go from there.”

I nodded. One step at a time. As long as we weren’t going backward, I could be patient. Well, patient-ish. I’d been tiptoeing around her the past few weeks, terrified that I was losing her. But she was talking to me now. We were going to be okay.

“Thank you,” I said. “For coming tonight. For talking to me.”

“Thank you for being patient with me.”

Patient-ish, I thought again.

“I really don’t know what’s been going on with me. I tried to talk to you about it. But I can’t really put it into words. I just want to be…”

“Home,” I said, finishing her sentence for her.

“Yeah.” She smiled. “Home.”

“Did you want to get going?” I was grateful that she’d come tonight. But snuggling up to her on the couch actually sounded pretty good right now.

“I think I still owe you a few more Halloween dances,” she said.

“A few? Years worth, Brooklyn.”

“Then we should definitely get back downstairs.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door. But she looked over her shoulder one more time at the open closet.

I wondered if she was picturing that dress. And walking down the aisle to me. I hoped so. I hadn’t been joking when I said we should get married next month. Any time, any place. I’d been ready to marry her since I was 16 years old.

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