Page 3 of I Do, You Don’t (You Don’t #1)

Lara

T he night before the wedding, I can’t sleep. Not from nerves, but from memory. It comes back as it always does, uninvited, golden-edged, cruel in its warmth. The last time everything felt easy. The last time I still believed we were unbreakable.

Before everything unraveled, there was this: one weekend where forever didn’t feel long enough.

We drove three hours to a borrowed cabin on the lake, just the two of us and a trunk of untouched groceries. The air smelled of pine, citronella, warm wood, and worn paperbacks. Sunlight filtered through the trees, softening the world into golden hour.

The water glistened like melted glass beneath a cloudless sky.

Dragonflies skimmed the surface. Gentle waves lapped the shore, sun-warmed on top, cool beneath, tinged with the faint scent of algae and clean minerals.

I waded in slowly, pebbles pressing into my soles, and he followed, diving under with a splash before surfacing behind me.

“Boo,” he whispered at my ear, grinning as he wrapped his arms around my waist.

I squealed, twisting in his hold, but he only pulled me tighter, pressing my back to his chest. His skin was slick, sun-warmed, his laugh vibrating against my spine.

“You good?” he asked, low.

“Mmhm.” I tilted my head to his shoulder. “I could stay here forever.”

“I’d let you. ”

The sky stretched cloudless, impossibly blue. I let my limbs float, my thoughts still. The water swayed us, slow and lulling, occasional ripples brushing past like the lake itself was breathing around us.

When we got out, droplets clung to my skin; the sun dried everything but the soles of my feet. I wrinkled my nose as sand clumped between my toes, warm, sharp, impossible to ignore.

“Ugh. Sand. It’s sticking to everything.”

He glanced down, smirked.

“Allow me.”

“Gideon, don’t.”

Too late. He scooped me up, bridal style, and ran up the beach.

“Gideon!” I shrieked with laughter until my stomach ached. The wind tangled my wet hair, and his chest thudded beneath my arm with every step. “You’re gonna fall!”

“Not a chance,” he said, breathless. “You think I’d drop my favorite person?”

He slowed just before the blanket, collapsing with me into it as if we were still falling. We landed in a tangle of limbs, laughter, and sun-warmed cotton. The scent of sunscreen and lake water clung to us. Woven fibers lightly scraped our skin.

He laughed, chest shaking beneath my cheek. He kissed the tip of my nose, then my cheek, then my mouth, slow and sure, lips tasting faintly of citrus and lake salt, like time had stopped for us.

Later, after I’d showered and pulled his hoodie over my damp hair, he wrapped his arms around my waist and kissed my forehead as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“You smell like lake water and shampoo,” he murmured into my hair. “And I’ve never wanted to marry someone more.”

I laughed and pressed a cold can of lemonade to the back of his neck. In retaliation, he jerked back, grinned, and caught my wrist.

“Careful,” he warned. “You start with sneak attacks, I’ll end this weekend with a ring.”

“Promises, promises.”

That night, we lay tangled in blankets on the screened porch, the fire crackling low as cicadas droned in the distance.

The air smelled of charred wood and marshmallows softening in the bag.

I watched him sketch in the notebook I’d brought for wedding ideas, he’d turned to a blank page and drawn the cabin.

Our initials carved into the porch railing.

A little version of me in the rocking chair, holding a coffee mug twice the size of her head.

“I’m keeping this,” I whispered.

“Good,” he said without looking up. “You keep all of me.”

He said things like that often, soft, stunning things, like they didn’t cost him anything. But sometimes I wondered if he meant them the same way I did, or if he just liked how they sounded leaving his mouth.

And I believed him. God, I did.

When I woke the next morning, he was already making breakfast, humming, wearing the hoodie I’d stolen the night before. The cabin smelled of coffee and cinnamon, of comfort and second chances.

The sizzle of butter in the pan, the scrape of his fork against the bowl, the faint thud of cabinet doors, all of it felt like music.

He slid a plate across the counter and kissed my temple.

“I hope I never hurt you,” he murmured into my skin. “I don’t think I’d survive it.”

I didn’t answer. Just held him tighter.

His phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, rolled his eyes.

“Delilah. She says I’ve gone soft, and that I’ll regret it.”

I wrinkled my nose.

“Sh e means well,” he said. “Ignore her.”

And in that moment, I did. Because he was everything. Because there was no version of the future where I wasn’t his.

I try not to remember that weekend. But it clings, in smells, in sounds, in the way my body still waits for his touch in the quiet. It was the last time I was sure of him .