Page 80 of When Hearts Remember

Urgency burgeons inside me.

She teases me some more, then winks. “No ring, no answer. You’ll just have to wait until our curry date next week.”

An ache appears inside my chest and I fight the urge to rub it. It’s just nerves. After all, I never thought I’d propose to anyone.I’m going to make this woman mine soon. I’ll have a lifetime with her.

But the soreness intensifies.

I have the strangest urge to whisk her out of the country under the cloak of the night.

I shove the ridiculous thoughts away and watch her dance around in the snow, her nose tipped in red. My snowy ballerina.

Before long, we find ourselves huddled in front of the fireplace again, this time bundled up in a pile of blankets.

Her teeth chatter as she takes a sip of the hot lavender honey tea I made for her—I’ve stocked my cupboard with fresh sprigs of lavender and packets of local honey ever since we got together.

She sighs happily and stares at the journal in front of us.

We’ve finalized the first seven items of her Twenty by Forty list, and naturally, we’ve scribbled our thoughts next to each item as well.

Alexis and Ethan’s Twenty by Forty list (Well, Ethan will be 44, but that’s beside the point):

Item 1: Eat ghost pepper curry.

Dreamer: If we can eat one of the spiciest peppers out there, we can survive anything.

Keeper: We can survive anything without burning our mouths off.

Dreamer: Don’t tell me you’re chickening out.

Keeper: Never.

Item 2: Find a red heart-shaped piece of sea glass in Mermaid’s Tears Beach in Hawaii.

Dreamer: Do you know red is one of the rarest colors of sea glass? Same with the heart for the shape? But it’s out there waiting for me to find it.

Keeper: It’s only a piece of glass.

Dreamer:Pssh.Polished by the ocean for ages. In the shape of aheart, Ethan. Imagine this—you, me, walking on the beach, finding a rare heart-shaped glass. Doesn’t get more kismet than that.

Keeper: I’d rather be doing something else on the beach with you.

Item 3: Skydiving over the Namib Desert in Namibia.

Dreamer: It’s the oldest desert in the world and I hear the views are spectacular where the sand meets the Atlantic Ocean. Enough said.

Keeper: No arguments from me. This actually sounds pretty cool.

Item 4: Write a love letter in a Paris bookshop.

Dreamer: This may be the easiest goal, but it’s so damn romantic. A love letter in the city of love in a place hosting love stories from the ages? It has my name written all over it. I think I even know which bookstore I want to visit.

Keeper: Let me guess, Shakespeare and Company? You’ve been to Paris before. Why didn’t you do this then?

Dreamer: There are some days when I think you’re the most romantic man on earth, and then there are days when I wonder if you hired a ghostwriter to pen those poems for me.Hello?I haven’t been to Paris withyou, Mr. North Star. And it’ll be so meaningful to write a love letter with the love of my life.

Keeper: Because I’m the reader of your book. And you’re the reader of mine.

Dreamer: You’re forgiven because you remember my motto.

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