The End of the World (35 page)

“I can’t either, but I’m glad you came.”

I can hear the hope in my voice. I wonder if she hears it too.

She hugs her knees to her chest and stares straight ahead. Unable to just sit beside her without making some sort of contact, I reach out and cover her hand with mine. She’s quiet so long that I begin to think I’ve crossed a line. But then Shaye surprises me like always when she moves her body closer and leans into my arm. Her head comes to rest on my shoulder, a perfect fit.

“What are you working on out here in the dark?”

And this is my moment. The moment when the thoughts I’ve had all night about life being short collide with the pep talk I’ve given myself about making the most of the opportunities God puts in front of you. This is the moment I let go of my inhibitions. The moment when I can tell her once and for all how I feel—lay it all on the line—and either come out the winner with the best woman God ever made, or a loser. Still alone. Still wishing for something I’m never quite allowed to have.

“I was writing something for you.”

Surprising me, her head comes up and she looks at me. It’s impossible to miss the light that appears behind her eyes.

“The poem?”

I frown. “What poem?”

She rolls her eyes. “The poem you wrote me a long time ago. The one you wouldn’t let me read that day in front of the swing sets.”

I can’t believe she remembers. “I never told you it was a poem.”

Her grin fades, replaced by the cutest crater of doubt that appears between her eyebrows. “It wasn’t a poem?” Doubt is joined by disappointment. Turns out I can’t let either stick around for a long visit.

I smile. “It was a poem.”

Like a kid on Christmas morning, she turns to face me head on. “Let me read it.”

I can’t help the choked laugh that escapes my throat at the excited picture she makes. I pull the paper out from under my leg. Taking a deep breath, I hand it over.

Within seconds, she scans the page, and then scans it again. I see her stop breathing. I see her go completely still. I see the tears that sting her eyes before the first one falls. In a matter of seconds it’s joined by another. And then another. Each one splashes against the page before she moves the paper away a few inches. Finally, she looks up at me. Fear and doubt are back, and they’re working in tandem to make her eyes look more pained than they’ve ever been.

“Cameron, I don’t know what to say.”

I bring her hand to my lips and hold it there. This is where it belongs. This is where she belongs. Anything less cheats us both.

“Say yes.”

Again, her gaze drifts over the water, over the place we once called the end of our world. But now I know that the world is much bigger than this lake, than this dock. It’s bigger than fear and pain and awful foster parents who only want you for the money—and in Shaye’s case, a few minutes of sick pleasure. It’s bigger than what you’ve done in your past or what you might face in your future. It’s bigger than your worst nightmare and your biggest dream. It’s bigger than all of it. All the time.

But without someone to love you…it’s nothing.

Shaye is struggling. I can see it. Finally, she gives voice to the question that’s been poised on her lips the whole time she’s been gnawing it into submission.

“Cameron, what’s to say you won’t change your mind tomorrow? How am I supposed to believe that you won’t wake up next week and decide your first instinct was right? That you can’t trust me? That you need to move on without me?”

It’s a valid question, one I don’t blame her for asking. So I do the only thing I can. I start with the truth. I shift to face her, bring my forehead to rest on hers. In all these years, I’ve just wanted her to understand. Me. Herself. Us. She looks down at her lap. I can see the moisture developing around her lashes.

“We fit together, Shaye. Some of our parts might be bent or jagged or missing altogether, but the pieces that remain…they make the most beautiful puzzle. So beautiful you barely even notice the holes.”

I can tell she’s unsure by the way she bites her lower lip. Unable to watch her forcing it into submission, I take her face in my hands, tilt her head up, and touch her lips to mine. The kiss is tentative, soft and questioning, much milder than I would like, but as her mouth parts and she allows me in, I’m praying she finds her answers. After a moment, I pull back and look her in the eyes. My hands stay on her face, caressing, soothing, reassuring.

“I can promise you, with one-hundred percent certainty, that I will never regret a second.”

She studies me. Her trademark look that conveys fascination, awe, and the smallest amount of disbelief. I love that look. I always have. I love it as much as the question I’m sure will come next.

“How do you know?”

And I shrug. Grin. Look at her. Because the answer is so simple and so pure and so obvious and I’ve said it a million times in my mind, but this is the first time the words have ever come out of my mouth.

But it won’t be the last.

It will never be the last.

I smile just thinking about it. And then I say this:

“Because I’ve always known. Since I was fourteen and holding a suitcase and staring wide-eyed into the face of the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, I knew my world would begin and end with you.”

Almost two years later

“Happy Birthday.”

“No, it isn’t.”

He smiled to himself as he reached for his tie and slipped it around his neck. He knew she would say that, knew it like he knew nearly everything else about her. That she liked cream in her coffee, but only the real kind—none with that fake high fructose corn syrup crap designed to ruin an otherwise halfway-decent beverage. Or that she liked to have her neck rubbed exactly one inch above the top of her spine because that single spot was where she stored all the tension in her body. Or that her favorite movie was
The Notebook
and her favorite book was
Slammed
and her favorite music was anything by Coldplay—all too sappy and basic for his tastes. But today wasn’t the day to analyze his wife.

Today—like every other day in his life for the past twelve years—was the day to celebrate her.

He turned around to let her fix the knot; in all his years of tying them, he still couldn’t get it right. “Yes, it is. It’s a great day to be alive.”

She rolled her eyes. “Says the guy who’s still in his mid-twenties. Meanwhile, I’m stupid twenty-nine, facing my thirties, and getting older by the second.”

She had complained about this for days, and he was finished hearing it. His arms slipped around her, coming to rest on her hips. Those hips were his favorite. “Older maybe, but you get hotter and hotter each year.” His hands crept a little lower. Lower still. Because she was his wife and he could touch her if he wanted to.

As usual, he wanted to.

“Stop that, Cameron.” She slapped at his hands and put up quite a protest, but she laughed. Her laughter was always a good sign.

He gave a half grin and kissed her neck. “What if I don’t want to?”

Despite the way she squirmed in his arms, a little moan escaped her lips. “It’s my birthday and you have to do what I say. Besides, I’m way older than you and—”

He stopped that ridiculous sentence by pressing his lips to hers. Older women were every guy’s dream, and Cameron was no exception. Although where Shaye was concerned, he didn’t give a crap about age. She could be twenty or forty or sixty for all he cared.

When you find your soulmate, age doesn’t matter.

His tie had come loose and Shaye had one hand inside his half-unbuttoned shirt, her mouth on his neck and her warm breath doing all kinds of crazy things to his insides, when they heard it.

“Macy’s crying. Whatcha guys doing?”

Cameron ripped his mouth away from Shaye’s at the same time she gasped and jumped away. The back of her hand came to rest against her bottom lip as she struggled for composure.

“Nothing, buddy. Daddy’s just telling me happy birthday. How long has she been crying?”

Zachary shrugged. “Just a couple of minutes. Maybe an hour.”

Cameron smiled over at Shaye. Unlike him, Zac wasn’t that great with numbers. Yet. Then again, all things can eventually turn around.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go get her out of her crib.”

All three of them walked out of the room and into the bedroom where their foster daughter sat whimpering in her bed. When Shaye smiled down at her, Macy’s cries fell away into a giant, toothless grin.

Six months ago they applied for a license to become foster parents; two months ago they received it. Three days later, an eight-month-old redhead named Macy came to live with them. They didn’t know how long she would stay or even if the temporary placement might become a permanent one, but they would give her the best home they possibly could as long as she lived here.

Because outside of the work that paid the bills—Cameron’s new position at
Texas Monthly
and Shaye’s part-time job at a downtown boutique—this was their job. Their calling, the way they saw it. Because what could possibly be better than making life a little easier for a child who needed love?

“Now that she’s done crying, can we have cake?”

Well, there was cake. Birthday cake might be better, at least in Zac’s five-year-old opinion.

“Sure,” Cameron said. “Let’s have cake.”

Shaye raised an eyebrow in a warning. “At seven-thirty in the morning?”

Cameron kissed her nose, not at all fazed by her lecture.

“Life’s too short to worry about something as silly as time. I would think you would know that by now, being so much older than me and all.”

“Shut up, Cameron.” Shaye shoved his arm, but he caught her and locked his arms around her waist.

“Shove me like that again and I’ll make you pay.”

She grinned up at him. “I like the way your mind works. But I have a question for you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Which is?”

“Did you get me a present? Because I’m still waiting for you to outdo the one you gave me a couple of years ago.” She was talking about the poem, and her enthusiasm for it still made him smile.

“That wasn’t for your birthday.”

“It’s still the best present I’ve ever been given. Besides a little wooden cross that some nerdy kid with acne gave me a long time ago.”

He smiled. “I didn’t have acne.”

“But you did have good taste, and you were a genius with a saw.” She kissed his nose. “So tell me, is this years’ present better than either of those?”

Cameron hesitated, then leaned in and kissed her long and slow, completely ignoring the way their son gagged and giggled below them. Too quickly, they broke apart. He took her by the shoulders and turned her around.

“Why don’t you lead the way to the kitchen and find out?”

He followed her out of the room, knowing that even though it wasn’t much, she would love this present.

He got her a dream catcher—a real one made of stained glass and polished silver, one made specifically for the task of holding all her dreams for the future. Shaye’s past was over and gone, and even though he knew she would hang it above their bed next to that old wooden cross that probably held as much sorrow as it held joy, it was time for a new one. This one was as pretty as it was promising, appropriate since everything ahead held nothing but promise.

But first he watched her walk down the hallway, smiling to himself when she did that thing she always did when she passed by it in the hallway. She slowed her steps, trailed her fingers over the frame that encased the words he’d written in his heart so many years ago and jotted down in pencil the night he proposed. He knew she was reciting them in her mind, could almost see the movement of her lips as they entered the kitchen.

He knew so much about her.

And if he had it his way…

He’d spend the next fifty years learning everything.

THE END

Alone isn’t a state of mind

It’s a living, breathing, biting thing

That takes up residence in a dark corner

Of a heart that’s already crowded with abandonment

I met you in that corner

You met me in the vacant space

And we came together, doing our best to escape the repercussions

That stuck to both of us

Like dried blood from separate decade-old wounds

In that quiet corner, you took my alone

You held hands with my alone

You covered it…you cleaned it…

You restored it…you replaced it

With something that felt a lot like acceptance

And for that reason

If for no other reason at all

I’ll love you to the end of your world…

To the end of my world…

To the end of the world we make together…

If you’ll let me.

And below it:

Let’s stop wasting time.
Marry me
.

2015 was a rough year for me, which made this book both a labor of both love and pain. But I came out of it changed. And even though I hate change almost as much as I hate laundry, change isn’t all bad, right? Sometimes it makes things better. After all, our jagged edges can’t be smoothed out without a little friction. As for me, change brought about a new mindset, a new way to write, a few new friends, and it renewed a few relationships with old friends. For all of these things I am grateful. I would like to thank the ones who stood next to me, who called and texted and brought me coffee and spoke words of encouragement. You’ve all blessed me. Some of you don’t even know it.

Nicole Deese is a rock star, the kindest heart, a soulmate, a friend unlike any other I’ve ever had. It took two seconds of talking in a hallway about our shared love of romance novels and cities void of humidity (curly hair problems) to know I had found a friend for life. Plus, I can ask her for an endorsement and she always gives a great one. See the one on the back cover of this book? Told you so. I cannot, however, ask her for directions. She’ll point me to Florida when I’m trying to get to Seattle, lead me off the elevator at the fourth floor when I’m trying to get to the thirteenth. Despite that one tiny flaw, I’ll love you forever, Writer Wife. And I will always be jealous of your stupid back yard.