Page 65 of I Always Will

“You absolutely do not regret it.”

“I definitely do. And we didn’t get engaged. It was just a silly little deal that two kids made.”

He barked a laugh, sipping carefully at some water so as not to spill it on his red velvet suit. “Oh, yeah. I remember making contracts that I was going to marry all my friends back then.”

She stared pointedly at him. “Hilarious, Daniel, truly.”

He moved to stand directly in front of her. “You two got engaged before you even really knew what you were doing and you’ve spent the last seventeen years coming back to one another. You don’t need to tell me exactly what’s in the notebooks or the letter she gave you for me to know she’s been waiting for you exactly like you’ve been waiting for her.”

Alexandria’s eyes flickered to her clutch, inside of which she’d tucked the note that Hailey had sent with the journals. It had been hurriedly scrawled, but having Hailey admit that she’d been missing Alexandria so much that she’d been writing to her for seventeen years had broken every barrier wrapped around Alexandria’s heart. She’d cried before she’d even gotten to the journals—themselves a difficult, heartwarming, heartbreaking, educational journey—and she could see herself carrying it around for the rest of her life.

Daniel turned to see what she was looking at. He smirked. “The note’s in your bag, isn’t it?”

“What? No. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Alexandria thrust her chin up into the air haughtily but Daniel simply laughed at her.

“Dude, you’ve been waiting for Hailey Davis for seventeen years. She’s back. She loves you. And you’re both only two months into being thirty-five… Plenty of time to follow through on that contract.”

Alexandria stared at him. Above anything else she’d admitted last night, she was most embarrassed about that—the niggling hope that maybe, just maybe…

He grinned wider. “I’m just saying, a wedding is a great place to find a romantic moment and maybe pick your engagement back up.”

“We were never engaged.”

“Sure you weren’t.” He gestured to her. “You’ve spent the last seventeen years being single, waiting for her. From what I’m gathering, she seems to have been doing the same. And you look incredible. Do yourselves a favour and go for it.”

“You do realise today’s about you and Esme, right? Not me and Hailey.”

“I absolutely do realise that, but what I want for my wedding is to know that my sister and one of Esme’s favourite people are both happy.”

“Excuse me. I already bought you the most expensive blender in existence. You don’t get to demand other gifts.”

“Whoa, spoiler alert. You’re not supposed to tell people what you’ve bought before they open it.”

She rolled her eyes. “You literally told me you’ve been looking into buying one, I told you I’d get it as a wedding gift. It wasn’t the world’s best-kept secret.”

“No, that would be yours and Hailey’s almost twenty-year engagement.”

“If it wasn’t your wedding day, I would murder you right now.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You love me far too much for that.”

“Doubtful.”

He smiled over his shoulder at her like he knew it was a lie. She knew it was a lie too, but meddling brothers were the worst.

And also the best.

“Shall we?” she asked, gesturing to the door.

“Absolutely. I’ve got a wedding to get to.”

She scooped up her clutch and her bag filled with emergency supplies and her gift for Hailey. The butterflies in her stomach ratcheted up a notch and she had to take a deep breath to stop herself from passing out from nerves.

Concentrate on Daniel’s wedding. That’s the priority today.

And it was. But Hailey was going to be there. And Alexandria was now aware of a bunch of twists in her life, of the journey she’d been on, the story she was writing that she, herself, said was impossible to write without Alexandria. And, in Alexandria’s absence, Hailey had been writing the story to her. If that wasn’t a sign that her whole life was about to change, Alexandria didn’t know what was.

She hadn’t been so aware of the massive way her life was about to change since she’d been in the runup to handing Hailey that first journal. She hadn’t been aware then that she’d one day be reading it, reading the despair Hailey was going through being away from her.

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