Page 99 of Her Pretty Words

I slowly set the box down and pull her against me. “She wasn’t alone,” I admit. “I never got the chance to tell you, and I’m so sorry that you’re just now learning this, but I was with her that day. I was the one who called 911.”

She lifts her face, lips parted in surprise. Her crying eyes dance between mine, tears clinging to dark lashes. “She knew you moved back next door?”

“She found out who I was the night before she passed away. She was going to tell you.”But she never got the chance.“I stayed with her the entire night, trying to comfort her as best I could when she found out about your grandpa.”

“Were you with her at the hospital?” she asks, her voice breaking over the words.

I remember that day so vividly. “Yes,” I whisper. “I held her hand as she passed.”

She tucks her face into my chest. “Thank you,” she cries.

“I was the one who called you,” I whisper. “I didn’t want you to hear it from a stranger.” Even though I practically was one.

She reels back, her face red. “That was you?”

I nod.

“I love you,” she says. She wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands, and then picks up the two pictures and looks at them for several moments. “Let’s frame these.”

I pick up the one of us running. “Can I have this one? I’ll hang it in my house.”

She looks up at me, her gold eyes shimmering when she says, “Move in with me.” She smiles widely from her words. “We’ll hang both the photos inourhome.”

Chapter 39

Macy

“Write me a story,” Grayson said once before.

Sitting before a bright screen, I clutch the locket resting above my heart. The one Grayson gave to me that once belonged to his mother. I’m honored to wear her jewelry, and the bracelet his twin made for me. I glance at the purple and teal beads adorning my wrist.

My fingers hover above the keyboard, and then, like magic, words spring to life on the page. I write a story of a young boy who lost everything, who survived by watching the sun through his bedroom window. Whose heart extended beyond the walls of his room and reached toward a girl he would find again as a man.

The Universe, or God, or destiny, whatever you want to call it, pushed in on them from all sides, leaving them no choice but to physically run into the other. That bubbly girl, whose life was a mess of tangled knots, would mistake the burning beneath her skin for hatred toward him the second time they met, assuming he was a mere stranger and not the person she once loved. But the broken boy inspired the angry girl to dance again, and without knowing it, every time he earned the sound of her laughter, a piece of his heart mended together.

A year later, seconds until midnight, the healed man turns to her, his stomach in knots. Fireworks explode in her eyes, reflecting off the midnight sky.

“Happy New Year!” she exclaims, finally meeting his tear-stained gaze.

Her eyes drop to the velvet jewelry box in his hand. With the sand beneath her bottom and his warm breath trickling against her ear, she clings on to every word he whispers.

Weeks later, beneath the stars, they speak their vows, with only their closest friends and a husky to witness. After sharing their first kiss as husband and wife, he says to no one in particular, “I’ll have her pretty words filling the silence for the rest of our lives.”

As if there’s an audience among the constellations, five shooting stars flash across the midnight sky, but one burns bolder than the rest, as though the bright and fiery thing is the most eager for this union.

Epilogue

Grayson

10 Years Later

Islowly peel open my eyes to find two sets of blue ones staring back at me. Macy’s side of the bed is empty when I reach for her. I groan and sit up, causing the little girl in front of me to giggle.

“Where’s your mother?” I ask.

“She went running without you,” Dominic says in his sweet, seven-year-old voice. He jumps on my legs hidden beneath the comforter.

“Can you make us chocolate chip pancakes? Pretty please?” Delilah, his twin sister says, dragging out the last word. She jumps on my other shin.

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