Page 93 of The Echo of Forever

I ignored her and waited for Oliver to ask the question, which he wouldn’t want the answer to if there were bad news attached.

Solei didn’t care if our mother was alive or dead; she never had. As for our brother, guilt ate at him more than anything.

He was the reason Forever wanted to dig into her whereabouts to begin with. They had a bond, the three of them, and it meant something to my wife. Their needs and wants went from being just mine to ours.

“Is she dead?” Oliver finally asked, looking at me expectantly.

I shook my head.

“Nah, she’s alive and asking for my help. Just not in the way we thought.”

He nodded and sat back.

“So, she wants something from you?” Solei asked before kissing her teeth. “I told both of you she would be no good.”

It didn’t surprise me that the woman who loved her mother deeply as a kid felt indifference for her now. Anger disguised as indifference.

“You still mad about her leaving and can’t even admit it,” Oliver argued, like always. “Why should we listen to you?”

Here we go.

I dropped down on the love seat to let them get their quarterly argument out of the way in peace.

“Because I’m not thinking with my emotions!” she yelled, throwing her hands up. “Your mother leaving don’t have shit to do with the argument you had. No matter what you did that night, she was going to always leave us, Oliver.”

He knew it to be true; we all did.

But Solei and I hadn’t been the last ones to see her like him.

“Yeah, but that ain’t mean she wanted her only daughter to become—”

It was on the tip of my tongue to stop him, but to my surprise, it was Forever who stepped in.

“It’s probably best you keep that to yourself,” she mused, looking between them with a familiar frown on her face. “I feellike I’ve heard this argument before, because I’m tired of it already. Say sorry and make up.”

This woman amazed me.

“Sorry,” they both mumbled at the same time, which made me laugh and earn a glare from my baby.

She was holding onto a paddle brush and spray bottle in one hand, hair wild and hanging slightly in her face. I smiled and rested my head in my hand.

“You need something from me, my forever?”

Solei gagged, but we both knew she was locked into whatever was happening, Oliver, too.

Forever pushed her closed fist out and opened it, revealing her wedding bands inside.

“You didn’t give them to me properly,” she said, tilting her head.

This beautiful creature had me wrapped around her fingers.

“My bad, baby,” I replied, standing and crossing the room to her. “Please allow me to make it up to you.”

I took the rings from her hands and got down on one knee.

Oliver and Solei were snickering like two bad ass kids, but I didn’t give a fuck. Whatever my baby asked for, she’d get.

“Forever Reid Cannon, my pretty dragonfly, will you allow me to properly give you these rings and recommit to being the only man worthy of your love?”