Page 161 of Stay With Me

“Are you and your mom and Jenna getting a jump on the wedding planning today?”

“Yeah, I actually needed to ask you something about that,” she mentioned casually.

She eyeballed him from inside the kitchen as he sipped his coffee. He gave her no reaction yet so she continued to pretend to busy herself.

“About what specifically?” he asked.

“What are your thoughts on Las Vegas?”

“Vegas?” He took another sip; still no reaction. “For a wedding?”

“Yeah, don’t you think that would be fun? We could all fly out for a weekend and make it super easy.”

“You mean to tell me you don’t want the whole big church deal with hundreds of people and all of that?”

“Nah, I’d rather us just be married. Like ASAP.”

Another sip; no reaction.

He lifted his eyebrows with approval. “Well, sweetheart, if that’s what you really want—”

“Oh trust me, honey. It is,” she interjected. “How’s that coffee?”

“It’s great.”

Still no reaction. He must have been sleepy.

She slipped out of the kitchen and sank into the cushion next to him.

“Honey,” she began, patting his leg. “Did you notice how you had that dream, and now so much of it is happening, except it’s all happening in totally different ways than the way you dreamed it?”

He turned to smile at her.

“Yeah, it’s all been way better so far.” He sighed contentedly as he draped his arm over her shoulders. “Talk about living the dream.”

He chuckled, and she became too impatient to wait for him to figure it out on his own so she tapped her nails on the coffee cup to draw his attention to it.

He appeared to stare at it for a moment, andstilldidn’t react, but just before she could blurt out the words herself, he whipped his head around to look at her with huge eyes.

“Thisis why you want to go to Vegas!”

“Yeah, like I said,” she went on casually. “We need to be married pretty much right now.”

He continued to stare at her with an open jaw until he dropped his face into his hands and laughed. “Holy shit.That didn’t goat alllike it did in the dream.”

She smiled and stroked the back of his head. “Well, aren’t you glad? I think it’s a sign that everything is not necessarily going to be as difficult as you may have thought. I think we’re going to have a beautiful life.”

He turned his eyes to glance at her face. “Difficult or not, it’s going to be a beautiful life.”

She nodded. “Because I have you.”

“And because I have you,” he added, rubbing her tummy and then glancing down to smile at the not yet existent baby bump. “And becausewehaveyou.”

THE END