Page 37 of Old Flames and New Fortunes (A Moonville Novel #1)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

ASH TREE:

My love is lionhearted, high as mountains, deep as the ocean.

Hours later, I watch ceiling-fan blades rotate, mentally trace grooves in white paint swirls on the ceiling until my eyes grow heavy. We’ve finally exhausted ourselves; he truly meant it when he said he intended to enjoy each other for a good while . Alex switches off his bedside light, the soothing pattern of his breathing lulling me to sleep, facing me with his cheek on the sloped edge of his pillow so that we can stay close through the night.

I’m startled awake after what feels like a handful of minutes have elapsed, but the numbers on my phone glare 4:17 a.m. I sit up, groping in the darkness. Alex groans softly in his sleep.

I slouch against the headboard, hand over my racing heart. Real. Still real.

I’m too keyed up, and I can’t play on my phone without waking him. He’s told me that he needs absolute darkness when he sleeps, or else he’s susceptible to headaches. I creep out of bed on tiptoe and into the hall. Before I know it, I find myself in his shower, hot water sluicing over my head, locks of my hair hanging over my face. My hair appears grayish when wet, overprocessed, with a rubbery, synthetic texture. I watch the suds of Alex’s shampoo trickle down. A bottle I recognize sits next to his shaving cream: Twilit Dreaming’s Lady of the Night Orchid Bodywash, the exact one I use. He never smells like that bodywash, which means he’s had it here waiting around just in case I might ever use it.

This breaks me. Alex is my one . I’ve wasted so much time finding him again, years that I’ll never get back. I wasted time getting to right here, right now . Every minute of the past two months that I’ve spent hemming and hawing, letting fear run my life, is a tragedy. Look at my bottle of bodywash. How long has it been sitting here? I want to throw it at my past self, right in the kneecaps, and shout, What are you waiting for! Go on! Go get your life!

I towel off while rooting through the dryer for something to wear, opting for a Cincinnati Bengals shirt and black boxer briefs. Then I pad barefoot to the back door. Wind batters the trees, leaves swaying violently as a diagonal rain cascades. It’s storm season.

I wander back to Alex’s room, hallway night-light spilling across his form as the door fans open. He’s lying facedown, one arm curled under my pillow. A sparkle in the gloom catches my eye: his magpie stash of jewelry—my rings, earrings, necklaces. I perch on the edge of his mattress, depressing it slightly, and slide my rings back on. I’ve been naked without them.

A hand reaches out, catching my left in a quick shot. He sits up fast, switches his lamp on. “Where’d you get that?” His voice is sleep-roughened and alarmed, not entirely awake.

I stare at him. “It was sitting right there.”

He reaches past me to smack the nightstand drawer, checking if it’s open or closed. Turns my hand over to inspect my rings, then lets go. Relaxes.

“What’d you think I was doing?” I ask suspiciously, eyes straying to the drawer. I watch his reaction as I try to tug it open, and he blocks me. His expression is a wall.

“What’s in that drawer, Alex?”

He doesn’t respond.

“What’s in the drawer, Alex.”

He scrutinizes me closely, then his arm goes limp, hand withdrawing. “Open it.”

Now I’m not sure if I want to. I don’t move.

He opens it instead, and I dare a peek at its contents—

There’s a ring inside. Not in a box. Just a ring resting on the IKEA faux wood grain. “What is...?” I turn it beneath the lamp to chase away shadows. The band is tarnished. A tiny diamond flanked by an oval sapphire and empty prongs, the third stone missing.

“My mother gave it to me on her wedding day.”

This doesn’t resemble any of Kristin’s rings that I’ve seen. “Why?”

“Because it’s yours,” he returns blankly. “She found it while gardening seven years ago.”

I wait for further explanation, but he doesn’t continue. “I don’t understand.”

“This is your ring, Romina. From when we were engaged.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t have a ring.” That’s one of the reasons why I was able to convince myself that calling off the engagement was no harm, no foul—nothing was official. No solid plans, just two kids and their desperation to stay together after peering into their future toward a path that diverged in opposite directions.

He merely stares at me, not saying a word.

“No.”

He holds out an expectant palm, which I drop the ring into. Alex’s gaze travels to a place and time I can’t see, a shape in the fog of his memories. “After Dad died, Mom put a little money from the settlement into a trust I got access to when I turned eighteen. I was going to use it for school, but when we decided to get married, I wanted to get you a ring right away. The band was my grandmother’s. It had this sapphire in it already but was missing the two other stones, which fell out ages ago.”

He appraises it thoughtfully. “Your grandma gave me an emerald from a ring of hers, which I took to a jeweler to have added. Gone now.” He taps the empty prongs. “I couldn’t afford much, for the diamond, but it was a beautiful ring.”

“You got a ring,” I repeat hollowly.

“Well, yes. I wanted to marry you. I mean, I knew we were underprepared financially, and the concept was a lot to get my head around initially, but I got... attached to the idea. I pictured you walking down an aisle toward me, all in white, with flowers—” He clears his throat, voice a little scratchy. “Flowers in your hair. Funnily enough, because this was long before you ever wore flowers in your hair.” He winds one of my locks around his finger, then lets it slowly unspool. “A couple days after you ended the engagement, the jeweler called to tell me the ring was ready. Put it in a velvet box, big smile on his face. ‘Good luck, kid.’?”

Alex isn’t smiling. White noise creeps between his words, slurring in my ear.

“But your mom—you said she found it? Gardening?”

“I threw it.”

It takes me a second to comprehend. My face falls into my hands. “Oh.”

“I couldn’t have it around me. I needed to get rid of it; couldn’t stand having it in the house.”

Even though I remain rooted to the spot, I’m simultaneously falling through the bed, through the floor, lost. “You seriously wanted to marry me.”

“Yeah, but it’s okay.” He rubs my arm. “Really. I was crushed, but I got over it—”

“Did you?”

A few beats pass. “No. But you were gone, and the world kept turning, and I had to figure out how to walk around without feeling like a piano was sitting on my chest.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, a tear rolling down the bridge of my nose. He leans toward me, gaze curious. His forehead creases. “You didn’t want it, sweetheart.”

I have nothing sensible to say.

Did I want it? At the time? Or did I want an unbreakable promise, a certainty? Would it have drastically altered our futures, if I’d known?

He wipes away my tear. “At first I held on to it because I thought you might come back. When... after that voicemail you left, I tried giving the ring back to my grandpa, but he was stubborn, kept insisting that we were meant to be.”

The mention of Joshua King is another cut.

“My mom told me to keep the ring. Use it whenever I proposed to another woman someday, but one of the stones was your grandmother’s. I couldn’t give some other girl a combination of our two families’ heirlooms.”

My throat closes. I am the luckiest person , I think, and all the others have missed out . He’s been walking around in broad daylight like a priceless treasure, and nobody’s tried to snap him up? What were they all thinking? What was I thinking, when I let him go? Too bad, rest of the world! Your loss! I’ll stitch my shadow to this man’s shoes like Peter Pan.

“So, one day I was sitting on Mom’s back porch, miserable. Angry and missing you. Then without thinking, I just.” He reels his arm back, demonstrating. “Threw it as far as I could.” A shadow crosses his face.

“I thought it was gone. Then, I’m talking to Mom right before we’re about to pose for the wedding photographer, and she puts this in my hand. Tells me she found it while gardening. Mom said she’d been watching us all week, the way we looked at each other, thought maybe I’d want this back. It’s been in her jewelry box for years. Your grandma’s emerald must have fallen out in the dirt... I’m so sorry about that.”

He’s watching me silently lose it. “You didn’t want the engagement anymore. You didn’t want a ring,” he repeats, less sure this time. “I thought you didn’t want it.”

I turn away, the tears falling faster. He’s got his arms around me in an instant.

“I would have kept it if I’d known you wanted it,” he tells me, voice thick with tears he’s trying to hold back. “I was bitter and angry and so goddamn sad. I wish we’d talked it out. I was so in my head about you changing your mind, thinking you changed your mind about me , not just a wedding. But you said so yourself, you didn’t actually break up with me. In retrospect, I see all the places where I should have said this, should have done that, but I didn’t.”

“Neither did I. We were both stupid.” I heave a ragged exhale.

He got me a ring. He got me a ring. He wanted me .

The tangible truth that Alex had wanted me forever carves a tiny scratch in the turning of the world, making time skip in disjointed bursts. I wonder what my life might have looked like if Alex had slipped this ring on my finger long ago, before I got the chance to bolt—a ring that was a little bit his family, a little bit my family, and with the new stone, a little bit us.

“But,” he says, interrupting my thoughts. “Maybe we can make it work now. Maybe that’s all that matters.”

I shake my head slowly, smearing the pad of my hand across my eyes so hard that slivers of color zip along like tiny fish. “I think I’m going to have a panic attack.”

His mouth is against my jaw. “Breathe. In and out. Nice and slow. It’s okay. It’s just a ring.”

“Not just a ring,” I mumbled. “It was my ring.”

“I didn’t know it was still your ring, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “Or I would’ve kept it in my pocket every day since.”

“I’d thought...” I struggle to verbalize it, because maybe saying the words out loud will make him realize they’re true. “That I didn’t deserve you. That you were too good for me. I still think that sometimes.” I’m downplaying this. “Okay, I think that a lot, actually.”

Alex stares.

And stares and stares. Finally: “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”

I dig the heel of my hand between my eyes. “I always thought you were too good for me. Everyone did,” I mutter, uncomfortable.

“I sure as shit did not , and neither did your parents, your grandma, your sisters, your friends, half this damn town. And even if they did?” He throws an arm. “Fuck ’em. You have no idea how excited I am, how much I can’t believe it, that I get all of Romina Tempest. And that idea still troubles you?” He wipes a hand over his face, sitting up higher. “If that’s what you think, then I’ve failed you. Miserably.”

“You haven’t—”

“You are so much more important, more indispensable to my happiness, my survival, than you can know, than you’ve given yourself credit for. You thought that by minimizing your presence in my life, I would flourish. You thought you were giving me more choices, but you were also taking one of my choices away.”

I watch him for a few moments. “An option you would have chosen.”

“Yes.”

I try to hide my face in my hands as I digest this.

“You’re incredible,” he tells me, voice hard as he endeavors to keep his emotions under control. “I’m the luckiest man alive, and I know it. I am desperate to keep you.”

His serious tone, coupled with the half-crazed wilderness in his eyes tells me he’s vowing here and now to make sure I never forget it. I nod, my world still adjusting.

“I will never let you go again,” I tell him through tears. “I’ll always choose you, Alex. I’m not as good at verbalizing my feelings as you are, but you have to know—I need you to know—how much I need you. You make everything better simply by being.” I kiss his forehead, his cheek, his mouth, desperate for someone who’s already mine. “You just make it all better.”

He slides a hand against my wet cheek. “Someday the ring’ll be here, if we need it, and I’ll replace the missing stone. Okay? It isn’t going anywhere. I’m certainly not going anywhere. You own me.”

I curl up into him, ring cast back into its drawer until someday, maybe. I kiss my way down his chest, feeling him react to me, and soon he forgets it all; feverish color, lips dark and swollen, fingers curling the blanket. I’m not going to forget what he told me, but I’m not going to spend any time pressing the bruise on purpose, missing him when he’s right here.

Right here with me.