Page 129 of That Reunited Feeling

“You like it then? You’re not mad?”

“Well, I need to see the kitchen first.” She gives me a mischievous smirk and wraps her arms around my neck. “But it’s probably going to be okay.”

Half my insides relax. The other half remains focused on the second, and most important, part of the day.

“You can look at the kitchen in a minute. But before we go back inside there’s something I need to ask you.”

I never expected to be this nervous. For my stomach to tremble, for my hands to be sweaty and yet also cold despite the beating August sun.

And no matter how many times I’ve run this scenario through my head, I never expected to actually drop down on one knee. Yet somehow, instinctively, that’s what I’m doing.

“Oh my God, Tom.” Hannah grabs both sides of her face. “Really? Seriously?”

I take her hands away from her cheeks and hold them tight. “Don’t jump the gun. I have a whole speech and everything.”

She digs her teeth into her lower lip. It’s hard to tell if that’s to stop herself from talking, laughing, crying, or some combination of all three.

The beautiful blue eyes looking down at me, the ones I want to lose myself in forever, glisten in the California sun.

“Hannah.” My voice cracks, so I clear my throat. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. Looking back, I can see now that we were always connected. Even when there was a giant ocean between us.”

My mind goes blank for a second. Shit. There’s a panicky pounding in my chest that I’ve forgotten what to say next.

“I never stopped loving you either,” she says and squeezes my hands.

Her words, her touch, her reassurance bring me back on track. “Even when we were thousands of miles apart, we were still connected. Because there’s this force field that pulls us together. An inescapable force. It’s like a third thing that exists outside of us. It’s not you, it’s not me—it’s a whole separate entity that pulls us together and refuses to let either of us go.”

Her chest heaves, and a single silent tear slips out and trickles down her smooth cheek.

“It’s like the universe insists we’re together,” I continue. “Like anything else would be going against what nature intends.”

She sniffs as another tear falls from her other eye.

I kiss the back of each hand. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you and Dylan.”

There’s a lump in my throat now, but I plow on. These are the most important words I will ever say in my life, and I’ll get them out if it kills me.

“I want to watch you blossom into the music career you always deserved, and cheer for you along the way. I want to watch Dylan grow into a remarkable young man who designs video games, or produces records, or stargazes, or fights fires,or whatever the hell he wants to do as long as it fulfills him and makes him happy. And I want to still be jamming with him when I’m too old and frail to get up and he has to pass me my guitar.”

Hannah flushes the pinkest pink, her brow furrowed, tears now a constant trickle.

She squeezes my hands. “You are already the greatest father figure he could have. And when I see you with him, it breaks my heart that you never got to have that with your dad.”

The lump in my throat swells to ten times the size. “And I wish they were going to be here for Walker’s wedding. And I wish they’d get to come to ours too.”

I reach into my pocket and take out the box that I’ve checked is still there approximately every ten seconds since I left home to pick up Dylan.

“Hannah Hepburn. You were my first kiss, my first love. And you’ll be my last. Will you marry me?”

I pop the lid, and she grabs onto the glass rail as if her legs are about to give out.

“Oh my God.” She looks from the box to me and back to the box. “It’s amazing. Incredible. Gorgeous. You had this made?”

“I did.” I pull out the star-shaped diamond ring and place the box on the ground.

Taking her hand, I slide the ring onto her finger.

“The same shape,” I say, resting the tattoo in the crook of my thumb and forefinger next to it.

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