Page 66 of Shattered Dreams
Walking out, I see Charlie coming into the house, and his eyes don’t even scan the room. As if my house has always looked like this. “My stuff is gone.” I blink twice. “Like, every single piece of everything is gone.” I turn around, wondering if I should call the police. I put my hand to my head. “How did they take all of the stuff and not leave anything?” I look at him, and he doesn’t even look fazed that someone broke into my house. “All of my things are gone.”
“They aren’t gone,” he reassures me, his voice not rising like mine. “I moved it out.” He walks into the room, standing in front of me. “We moved it out, started this morning when you left. Just finished not long ago.”
“Who is we and where did you move it to?” I ask and he just looks at me. His beautiful face tries to fight smiling at me, but he just smirks and then grins. The face I look for every single night I’m behind the bar. The face I look at right before I fall asleep. The face I wake up to each and every single day and have for the last eight months. The face I want to stare at for the rest of my days.
“Me and a couple of guys from the barn. Your brother came and helped.”
“Brady came here?” I say, pointing at the wooden floor. “To help you move my things out?”
“Yup.” He puts his hands in his back pockets, the T-shirt pulling against his chest.
“Where are my things?” I ask again.
“Took them to my house, our house now.”
I put my hands on my hips. “You took all of my things over to your house?”
“Our house,” he corrects me. “It’s been over six months. I’m done with this back-and-forth bullshit. Half here, half there. Playing heads or tails to decide where we sleep at night.”
“So you thought ‘hey, let’s just take all her stuff to my house’ instead of talking to me about it?”
“Yup.” He nods. “Another thing, besides you moving in with me.” He takes one hand out of his back pocket, tucks it in his front pocket, and takes something out before getting down on one knee. The phone drops from my hand, clattering onto the floor. “We’re getting married.” My hands go to my face. “I want you to move in with me, and I want to marry you. I’m not waiting forever either. Meaning, if I could convince you, I would do ittomorrow.” He holds out the ring. “I’m not wasting more time with you not being my wife,” he says softly. “I want to have my ring on your finger. I want your ring on my finger. I want to have babies with you. I want to fight with you for fun.” I laugh since we never, ever fight. It’s a strange thing; maybe it’s because we’ve been friends for so long, but there are no fights. “I want it all, and I want it with you.”
“Charlie.” That’s the only thing I can say.
“That isn’t how you say yes,” he jokes. Taking my hand, he places the ring on my finger, and I gasp when I look down. “I don’t want to hear anything either. I went with my mother.”
“This is massive,” I declare, looking down at the huge ring on my finger.
“You can hand it down to our daughter or our son, whichever you want.”
“I want my father to walk me down the aisle,” I say. “I don’t know how much time we have.”
“Does that mean you’ll marry me?” He smiles, and I grab his face in my hands.
“That means I’ll marry you. Tonight, tomorrow, this weekend.” I kiss his lips. “In this lifetime and the next, I will marry you each and every single time.” He gets up from his knees, swinging me around. “You are everything I’ve ever dreamed of but thought I would never get.”
“Dreams come true, baby, we’re proof of it.”
Five days later, in the middle of his backyard, with all our family and friends, wearing a wedding dress I didn’t even think would be possible to get on such short notice, my father walks me down the aisle to the man who made me see that I am worthy. Who showed me what unconditional love is. Who showed me what real love feels like. I became Mrs. Charlie Barnes.
