Page 42 of Forever Then

Chapter Thirty-Four

MY SOUL CHOSE HERS

Connor

Gretchen’s hair, rich with the scent of vanilla and lavender, coaxes me awake. The sun slices through the small gap in the curtains drawn over the sliding balcony door.

Blinking, I do a quick assessment and confirm I still have pants on, but my shirt is…

not on my body. More concerning, though, is how I’m playing the role of big spoon from the opposite side of the bed from where I began.

I throw a lazy-eyed glance over her shoulder.

My side of the bed sits vastly empty—one of life’s greatest mysteries.

I run my fingertips up and down her arm. She stirs and flips to face me. Head burrowed in my chest, she tucks her hands under her chin.

She nudges her leg between mine. “How’d you end up over here?” she says sleepily.

I throw my top leg over her hip. “Sshhhh. I find it’s best to not ask those types of questions, Fish.”

Her breathy chuckle whispers over my bare chest. She’s here in my arms, everything out in the open between us—the fact that I’m in love with her, notwithstanding. It feels too soon to say those words just yet.

If I wasn’t already gone for her three years ago, the events of the last eighteen hours have solidified it.

I’d never fully realized how much I craved a partner that fit in with my family until she yanked my phone out of my hand and fell in step with my parents like they were long lost besties.

The subsequent texts from Mom and Dad—of which I only showed the first couple to Gretchen—were a pure love fest proclaiming how much they love her, how beautiful she is and how they can’t wait to see her again.

Not knowing for sure if they still talk to Kelly and Paul Fisher, I erred on the side of caution and texted them while Gretchen was in the shower last night to tell them this was very new and to please not say anything to anybody before we are able to tell her family.

Maybe I’m crazy to think so far ahead, but I know she’s it for me. I’ve known it for longer than I care to admit. Picturing a happily ever after feels like a level of permanency I’d never allowed myself to indulge in before now.

“I see you ditched the shirt,” she mutters into my neck.

“Sshhhh,” I coo, stroking her hair, “let’s not try to figure out when or how that happened.”

She plants a soft peck on my collarbone as I kiss the crown of her head, our entangled bodies and mindless kisses so natural and uncomplicated. This is home, I think.

She is home.

“What time is it?”

“Don’t know,” I yawn.

She props herself up, squinting over my shoulder. “Damn, I need my glasses.”

With zero grace or consideration for my vital organs, she climbs over me until my hips are braced between her legs. She sweeps her hand across the nightstand and finally locates her glasses and slides them on .

“7:45,” she says and then looks down at me. “What are you smiling at?”

“You.” The girl with the sexy librarian glasses and her body draped over mine like a stage-five clinger baby koala.

“Mmmm, does my boyfriend have a glasses kink?”

“I have a you kink.” I squeeze her ass and roll us onto our sides.

She giggles and I move in to kiss her, but she jerks back. “Ew, I need to brush my teeth first.” I pout. “Romance is not dead one day in, old man.”

I roll again so I’m on top of her, my hands pinning her arms by her head. “Oh, I’m gonna romance the hell out of you.”

She lifts her chin defiantly. “Not with morning breath, you’re not.”

“Challenge accepted.”

My lips come to a hover above hers but she keeps them locked down, refusing to budge. I shift tactics by scattering soft kisses along her ear, down her neck and shoulders, her body can’t help but respond.

“This is manipulation,” she says, as my lips flick over her firm nipples through her tank top.

“You ready to kiss me yet?”

“Never,” she says, breathless.

Her body squirms as need begins to consume her. My lips continue over her collarbone and chest as my hands explore—waist then hips then thighs then exactly where she wants me. She grips the pillows, back arching up off the mattress.

She never does give me that morning kiss—she’s stubborn like that—but she unravels beneath me anyway.

A couple of hours later, I’m getting caught up on work emails while Gretchen gets ready when my phone lights up with an incoming call from Drew. He’s been impossible to get a hold of these last few days, his text replies coming in hours after the fact and with no insight as to what’s going on .

I rush to answer. “Hey, man.”

“Hey,” he sighs.

“Gretchen’s gonna be sad she missed you. I think she’s still in the shower. Do you want me to have her call you back?”

“No, no,” he rushes out. “I just wanted to check in. She doing okay?”

“Yeah, she’s alright. Are you okay?”

It’s only been three days since Drew called me in a panic, asking for a favor, but it feels like a lifetime ago.

“Yes, no, maybe. I don’t know, man. I’m sorry, I—I’m not sure I know which way is up right now.”

Silence falls. “You wanna talk about it? Gretch is really worried, you know.”

“I know, but…with her birthday tomorrow and the trip and whatever it’s about, I just don’t want to add another thing to her plate.”

Gretchen’s face when she read Cheyenne’s message last night, flashes forefront in my mind. Her news is ultimately good, even if it does carry shock value. But judging by the sound of my best friend’s voice, it’s obvious his news isn’t as good.

“You could tell me then?”

Reagan calls for him in the background. “Be there in a sec, babe!” he replies before leveling his voice back to me. “Listen, I gotta go. Can you promise me Gretchen’s okay? She’s not in trouble, is she?”

“I promise, she’s okay.”

“Is there anything more you can tell me?”

I take in a deep breath, burdened by the weight of what an honest answer would be. I’m in love with your sister. I’m taking her to meet her birth mom today.

“Honestly, man, she’d prefer to be the one to tell you.”

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “Thank you for being there for her.” The sound of his nails scraping along his face fills the pause that follows. “For me.”

A boulder lodges in my throat and I struggle to fight against the emotion bubbling to the surface. “Yeah, man. Of course. ”

When we hang up, I shut down my laptop and bring the hand clutching my phone in a tight fist to my forehead.

Echoes of promises made and broken aren’t so easily silenced when all I’ve allowed myself to think for the past six years is that I’m a terrible friend, I’m not good enough, and I don’t deserve forgiveness.

Hope exists now that I’ve chosen Gretchen once and for all, but it’s new, still just an ember down deep inside, buried beneath the weight of the guilt I’ve carried for so long.

The bedroom door opens and I turn to find Gretchen there, a goddamn vision dressed in a pair of olive green, high-waisted khaki shorts with a thick belt made from the same fabric cinching her waist and a tucked in white shirt that’s molded to her form like a bodysuit.

Hair still damp, no makeup—she’s perfect.

Taking in my expression, hers falters. “What’s the matter?”

I drop my phone to the table with a thud and move to stand in front of her in three strides. Her face in my hands, I bring my lips to hers. I breathe her in, breathing life to that ember tucked away inside.

I have her. She’s worth it. Everything will work out.

She clasps our hands together on her cheeks and brings them to rest between our chests, a soft, sweet reassurance that she instantly knew I needed.

Her tongue sweeps out and I quickly grant her access.

Our mouths glide softly around each other, but she keeps our hands locked tight, heart to heart—an anchor tethered to its vessel.

When we break the kiss, I rest my forehead against hers. “I talked to your brother.” She looks up at me. “He called while you were in the shower.”

“And?”

“And he asked about you, wanted to know what was going on, but I told him you’d probably want to be the one to tell him.”

She nods, albeit nervously.

“He wouldn’t tell me anything, Gretch. But whatever’s going on with him is not good.”

She rasps out an affirmation of what we’d both already assumed by now. “It scares me, too, but”—her eyes dart between mine—“there’s more, isn’t there? ”

I run my thumb over our clasped hands. “He thanked me for being here for you and for him and…” I trail off, shrugging my shoulders. “Can I be honest?”

“Of course.”

“I meant everything I said last night. I choose you. But I’m gonna need you to be patient with me when it comes to your brother.

I heard what you said about it being his choice how he responds to this.

And I get it. But he and I have a lot of history and I’ve spent years convinced that he would never forgive me if he ever found out about how I felt about you.

That choosing you meant losing him…meant you potentially losing him. ”

I take in a deep breath, my lungs craving air. Gretchen’s sympathetic gaze shows no sign of judgment.

“My head is a chaotic wasteland at the moment. I’m in this for the long haul because you’re it for me, but those fears are still there and it’s just…it’s really hard to shut them off.”

She pushes to her toes and kisses me again. “I wanna show you something.”

I follow her into the bedroom and take a seat on the bench at the foot of the bed as Gretchen runs to the closet for something.

When she settles in beside me, she props one leg underneath her, turning to face me.

I take the old copy of Little Women she holds out for me.

The same one I caught her reading on the hike and that I bought for her twelve years ago.

I gently run my hands over the cover, memories of her tenth birthday rushing in. “I saw this two days ago.” I arch a playful brow and she rolls her eyes.

“I know, but you didn’t see what was inside.” The softest smile pulls at her mouth. “Look at the bookmark.”

I open to the page marked by a thick piece of card stock that’s not a bookmark at all. A three by five envelope with Gretchen’s name scrawled across the center in my familiar handwriting lays between the pages. Tucked inside is the goldfish birthday card.

Gretchen’s words stop me before I get the chance to open it. “I know keeping the card all these years is a little pathetic, but I?— ”

“I don’t think that.” I look at her, my stern expression the only cover for the heart somersaulting in my chest.

She smiles softly. “Five years old is my earliest memory of understanding I was adopted. My parents never kept it from me before that, but it’s like I didn’t fully grasp what it meant until then.

Ever since, birthdays have been…bittersweet for me.

But, my tenth birthday, when you gave me this, I felt seen in a way I never had before.

“I know it was twelve years ago, but it’s still the most thoughtful gift anyone has ever given me.”

Gretchen’s hand comes to rest softly on top of mine.

“I’ve collected about a dozen editions of this book, but I only ever read this one. And it’s not because it’s my favorite story. It’s because it makes me think of you. Eventually I found myself picking it up just so I could feel close to you.”

I turn my hand over and weave our fingers together.

She runs her bottom lip between her teeth. “In the card you said I was your favorite and you called me Fish .” She gives me a half-shrug, a shy smile playing at her lips. “I guess it was the first time you felt like more than my brother’s friend, like maybe you were my friend, too.”

I flip the card over in my hand, opening and closing it along the well-worn crease in its center, recalling the details of that day twelve years ago.

“Everything about that day has led me here. The gift, the card, the things I shared with you…it’s why all the times I imagined this day, it was always with you.

“And I know it sounds dumb because I was only ten and it wasn’t like I was reading all of this into it at the time, but when I think about it now? I don’t know, it feels like it was the start of us , even if we didn’t know it then.”

Maybe love is that simple. It can arrive unsuspectingly into your life when you’re just a kid.

A love that starts out as something innocent and pure, but over time blooms into more.

By the time you realize what’s happened, you’re so far gone you don’t even know how or when it began.

All you know is you love this person— your person—and you can’t remember a time when you didn’t.

I think, maybe, my soul chose hers long before my heart or my head ever could.

“Did I lose you?” She turns my face with her hand so my glossy eyes find hers.

“I’m here, baby,” I rasp.

“I can be patient when it comes to Drew. But I need you to do me a favor.”

Her deep brown eyes suck me into their hypnotic trance. I’ll do anything for her and I hope she knows that.

“When all that history you share with my brother has you worried about losing him, I need you to remember that we,” she takes our clasped hands, tapping them against my chest and then her own, “you and me…we have a history too.”

I kiss her fast because I’m afraid of what I’ll say if I don’t. I’m bound to tell her I love her less than a day after asking her to be my girlfriend.

“I can do that,” I say when we pull back. “And for the record, you’re still my favorite.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re obsessed with me. Old news. Now, respectfully, can you stop making this day about you and help me pick out which shoes to wear?” She plants a loud smack on my cheek as she hops to her feet and prances to the closet.

“Now who’s the buzzkill,” I holler after her.

She pops her head out, a look of pure mock outrage on her face. “Hey, that’s my line.”

I could do this forever.