Page 2 of The Price of a Promise

“No.Your dad will flip if you do that.I don’t need him having any more ammo against me.”

A heavy silence thudded between us.Her father gathered ammo against me like a doomsday prepper.I needed to convince him to focus on a new delusion, because I was about to piss him off by asking his daughter to marry me.He’d be pissed no matter what—I just needed to make sure that it was more on the side of the fleeting annoyance end of the scale rather than the nuclear meltdown variety.

Cora’s dad was the type of man to let his nuclear meltdown spill out and affect society.Killing flora and fauna in its wake, rendering entire landscapes barren and radioactive.The man owned a real estate empire that made sheikhs salivate.He had resources at his disposal that I had only dreamed of.The type of money that led to Cora’s actual and profound bewilderment when we started dating and she found out I had a job.Why on earth would you work during college?she’d asked me.Her silver spoon naivete was only the first of the million differences between our upbringings.

But the depth of our connection—our love—surpassed all the differences.Even her father’s ticking closer and closer to radioactive status didn’t matter.

Cora was mine; I was hers.We both knew it, and it didn’t matter what he thought.

“I can come back east,” Cora blurted after our silence had bled into the rush of waves on our respective coasts.

“He wants you to focus on school.”That was the excuse her father always had when she wanted to fly home for a visit.Allan insisted on going to California whenever Cora wanted to see them.The man owned property in Los Angeles, which was where Cora stayed whenever she made the trek from school to Venice Beach.But he also owned Cora’s current home in Stanford, as well as untold amounts of other properties anywhere he happened to glance.Cora could stay wherever she damn well pleased, wherever she wanted to go.I knew how to read the subtext.His express goal was to prevent Cora from seeingme.

“Axel, I can just buy the ticket.Let him rant and rave.I don’t care.”

A smile twitched at my lips.I’d always suspected I’d find the best woman in the world to have at my side.I just didn’t know she’d be so badass to fling herself face first into a radioactive mess on my behalf.

“You know he’s gonna get mad…”

“I don’t care.Let him get mad.This long-distance shit is killing me.”

My fingers connected with a fragment of beach glass, exactly what I’d been searching for.I picked up the smooth remnant.It gleamed translucent blue in the gray day.“How mad is he gonna be when we start having kids?”

She chuckled softly.Maybe it sounded a little sad.“He’ll love them anyway.I know he will.”

I studied the pretty sea glass before chucking it away.It wasn’t the right one.It needed to be green—a blend of emerald and moss.To match Cora’s eyes.I dragged my fingers through the sand again, searching for the next piece.“How mad will he be when we get married?”

My entire body was tense, waiting for her response.She had no idea the ring was in transit.No idea that I planned on asking her within a matter of months, not years.No idea that I physically could not wait any longer than necessary to know that she would be my wife someday.

Her silence felt like an eternity.Finally, she said, “Not mad enough to not come to the wedding.”

“You think?”My fingers connected with another piece of sea glass.Clear.I chucked it.

“How could he miss his only living child’s wedding?”

She had faith in her old man.I, however, did not.“I’d fucking hope so.”My fingers returned to the sand.

“We’ve got plenty of time for him to come around to all of these ideas,” Cora said.

Except we didn’t.Not now.Not when my proposal rattled around inside me like energy particles inside the Hadron Collider.This shit was going to burst out of me.Once the ring arrived, it was game over.I’d been stalking the perfect engagement ring for months and had pounced on it like a lion in the fucking Serengeti when I found it, the perfect pear-cut halo twist for my Cora.

The sound of accordion music swelled in the background from Cora’s end.I laughed, remembering how weird those artists were the last time I visited Venice Beach.Goth dudes on stilts playing Ariana Grande on a goddamn accordion.I never saw shit like that growing up in the rural outskirts of Louisville.There was a lot of shit I didn’t see growing up in rural Kentucky, though.And a few things I wish I’d never seen.

But we’d discovered threads that tied Cora and me up tight like a pair of running shoes.We were both in the “living sibling” category.A designation neither of us ever wanted.But there was one critical difference.

She knew how her brother died.I’d never know where my sister went to or what sort of misery accompanied her to her final days.

“Ooh, I think I found your eyes.”Cora’s breathy excitement made me perk up.There was always an unacknowledged race to see who could find the other’s eye color first in the sea glass.We collected the glass, kept it as an homage to our love.Ten equally beautiful deep moss green pieces were tucked away in the apartment I shared with my brothers.It was one of the few things they didn’t know about me, and I liked that Cora got to have a part of me that even my two best friends—my brothers—couldn’t access.Cora kept her Axel-blue sea glass in a velvet bag that she hid in her lingerie drawer for no other reason than she thought I’d like to be next to her panties.And trust me, I really did like the Axel-inspired sea glass living with her panties.

”Is it a match?”I asked.

“Yep.I think it is.”The smile was evident in her voice.Just then, my fingers connected with another piece.Perfectly emerald moss, with a touch of transparency that made it a shoo-in for adding to my collection.

“I found your eyes too, babe.”

She hummed happily.“See?It’s God letting us know that distance means nothing when it comes to our love.”

I didn’t believe in the God part, but I sure believed in the rest of it.“Distance…time…nothing can come between us.”

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