Page 24

Bella

We ended up staying at the beach for almost a week and it was everything it should’ve been—everything our lives should’ve been right from the moment we first fell in love. But the good thing is, I stopped thinking thoughts like that by the end of it. I just enjoyed every minute of it.

I’ve spent the day putting the house back in order and now we’re just sitting on the porch, watching the sunset before we head out into the starry night to get back home.

And for the first time in forever, I can call a place home.

Because Blade will be with me and wherever he is, that’s my home.

I know that now. I accept it as the truth.

The evenings are getting chilly now that fall is approaching, but that’s OK because we’re holding each other and that’s as much warmth as I’ll ever need.

The sea is calm tonight, stretching before us like an orange-colored pane of glass.

A family is walking their dogs farther out on the beach, and I’ve just been watching the girl and boy playing with the doggies, tossing balls, rolling in the sand with them, getting their faces licked.

I no longer don’t miss or envy that kind of carefree happiness. I just want it for myself.

Blade’s been quiet and tense all day. I’m sure he’ll say we should ride at any minute. But I want to stay here a little longer.

“What’s on your mind?” I ask, since I was never good at handling suspense in silence.

“War,” he says then looks at me with shock in his wide-open eyes, like the word just tumbled out without his control.

I sit upright, stare at him, trying to control the shakes starting deep inside my chest. “What war? What are you talking about? Does it have to do with Moretti? With me?”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s a thing up north. Not even our fight. We just owe the MC whose fight it is big, and they’ve called in the debt.”

“How long will you be gone?” I ask, the last word sort of sticking in my throat. It sticks in my chest too.

“What if you don’t come back?” I add, speaking my biggest fear, but so quietly I barely hear it myself.

“Of course I’ll come back,” he says and holds me tight. But I know what this is. He’s worried, but he’s trying to be brave for me.

“We’ll only be there as a show of strength,” he adds. “The MC we’re helping, they’re more than capable of winning the war on their own.”

“So why do they need you?”

I know the exact layout of scars from the bullets that almost took him from me forever now. I know them like the back of my own hands. And right now, I can’t stop picturing more of them appearing, blossoming red. Ones where the blood doesn’t stop flowing.

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” he says quietly. “But we’ll need them too, for the thing I told you about the other day. So we have to do this.”

I lean away from him and cross my arms over my chest as I gaze out over the sea. It’s not beautiful anymore, now it seems like a sea of blood, and the happy family with their dogs a slowly disappearing mirage.

He rests his head on my shoulder.

“But once I’m back, I’ll make you my wife,” he whispers. “If you’ll have me.”

He’s holding out a ring too, one with a huge diamond that is also glowing blood red in this light. I gasp and clasp my hand over it, to dispel the vision, to hold on to the sentiment before it disappears like a mirage.

“Do you mean it?” I ask.

The first time I was presented a ring like this I was fourteen years old and the man offering it was the last guy on earth I wanted to marry.

But I didn’t have a choice. I had to take it.

Just like I never really had a choice when Blade asked me out.

I had to choose him. Even if it meant going against every tradition I was ever taught.

He smiles. “I’ve meant it since the day you made sure I came out of my shell and asked you out. And definitely since the first time I kissed you.”

“Yeah, well, I knew I’d say yes if you asked since before all that,” I say.

“I believe it,” he says. “You always knew exactly what you wanted and always went after it.”

“For better or worse.”

I laugh at that, so does he. And it’s the kind of laugh that can erase even a decade of pain and sorrow. And can definitely erase most of my worst decisions. Because he was always my best decision. Despite everything,

We kiss and miss the sunset because we don’t stop. Stars are twinkling above us when we finally come back to the present, to the road that leads to our future. We finally found it again. And this time, I’m staying on it no matter what.