Page 110 of Liberating Bells
“I meant what I said,” I mumble, my words slurring. He presses his lips to my forehead.
“Hm?”
“I really can’t wait for you to be my husband,” I say.
Happiness blooms through me at the outcome of our life. It took a while to get to where we are, but at this moment, I’d do it all again. Because though the path might have been absolute torture, what I have now is a dream come true, and I’ll never take it for granted.
40
RYAN
“Are you excited?”I ask Izabel. She’s sitting in the passenger seat of my car, fiddling with her engagement ring on her finger.
Izabel turns those striking blue eyes on me and gives a reassuring smile. “I’m so excited I can barely handle it.”
I grin at her as I pull into my parents’ subdivision. When we arrive, she meets me at the front of the car, and we stroll hand-in-hand up to the door. I don’t bother ringing the doorbell and just push the front door open. The house is warm and welcoming against the chilly evening air. I hear laughter coming from the living room, and a delicious smell wafting from the kitchen.
Bells wiggles out of her jacket and then hands it to me. I take it and drop it on the bench by the door before bobbing my head toward the kitchen. “I’m going to go say hi to my mom.” Bells gives me an encouraging smile and nods as I tip forward and press a kiss to her temple, then wander off towards the kitchen.
My mom looks up with a grin when she sees me enter her domain. I stick my hands into the pockets of my slacks and smile back. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hey, Ryno! Glad you could make it.” She lifts a big pot off of the stove and steps toward the sink, dumping the water out of it.
“It’s kind of our party,” I chuckle as I peer into the many different dishes she has going. She insisted on throwing us this engagement celebration dinner as soon as I told her I was planning on proposing. “What are you making? Can I help you with anything?”
My mom presses her lips together and glances around. “I think I have it pretty much handled right now, hun, but thank you.”
“Okay.” I spy a tray of veggies sitting on the breakfast bar and reach for a carrot, crunching it between my teeth. “Where’s Thals?”
“She went to go see a movie with her friend Nora. She should be back in a little bit. She was really looking forward to seeing Izabel’s ring.”
I laugh and pop a cherry tomato in my mouth. “She’s such a little hopeless romantic.”
Mom tosses her head back and laughs. “Don’t I know it. Although you were like that too.”
I crinkle up my nose. “I was not.”
She gives me a look. “Please. You still are. You have a big heart, Ryan. Don’t you remember one of the first things you said to me when I got to the hospital after you all were stranded in the woods?”
“No…?” I’m sure I said a lot of things right after that whole situation. At the time, all I could think about was Izabel and that we weren’t together anymore. After being together and relying on each other so much, it was a definite shock to the system to be alone in that hospital room.
Mom puts the pot back on the stove, and then turns to face me. Her hand rests on her hip, and she has a sly smile on her lips. “You looked me dead in the eyes and said, ‘Mom, I’m going to marry her.’ I had no clue who you were even talking about! All I knew at that point was that that dumb camp let my baby getstranded in the woods, and here he was talking about marriage.” She laughs and shakes her head. “I didn’t even know how to respond.”
I go for the celery this time. “I think you paused for a second, and then told me you were going to go get me a burger.”
She chuckles again. “That sounds about right. But here we are, celebrating an engagement, how long in the making?”
“Too long,” I say firmly, leaning against the edge of the counter. “Far too long.”
“Things usually have a way of working themselves out,” Mom speculates. She reaches for her oven mitts before pulling open the oven and reaching for the pan sitting inside. “It’s hard for me to believe that my baby is getting married, and maybe soon, you’ll have babies of your own.”
I grab the shredded mozzarella cheese sitting on the counter and sprinkle some over the steaming pan of lasagna. “It blows my mind too.” I peer around my mom to still make sure we’re still alone, then I let out a breath, feeling comfortable to admit to her what’s on my mind. “In fact, I’m a little nervous.”
“What are you nervous about?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I kind of feel like all of this is too good to be true. That I’ll wake up and it will all just have been a dream. Or if it’s not a dream, that I’ll be a terrible husband or a worse father.”
Mom turns her attention back to me, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “Oh, honey, trust me, you have absolutely nothing to be nervous about.”
