Page 88 of Write Me For You
“I love it,” she said.
“There’s one more,” I said, my chest squeezing tightly.
June froze when she turned the page. She glanced back up, tears in her eyes, and I’d retrieved the ring from my pocket—her mamaw’s ring, the same one from our love story. Her father had given it to me when I’d asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
“Jesse,” June whispered, speechless.
“Marry me, Junebug?” I took her hand in mine, drawing her gaze away from the picture of her left hand wearing this ring too. “Marry me. Tonight, tomorrow, next week, next year, I don’t care. Just say you’ll be mine forever?”
JUNE
Jesse and June’s Happily Ever After
Hopeful, passionate, forest-green eyes waited for me to respond. My heart was fit to burst, to overflow with love. I glanced down at the picture Jesse had drawn. It was of my hand, and on the left ring finger was the ring that was now being offered to me. And I recognized the ring—it had belonged to my mamaw. Which meant Jesse had asked my daddy for permission.
My heart exploded all over again.
“Yes,” I said—there was no other answer to give. I looked at Jesse. “Yes. Yes, I will marry you. In any lifetime, in any love story, I will always choose you.”
Jesse’s responding smile was euphoric. With shaking hands, he lifted the ring from the box and slid it on my finger.
It was a perfect fit.
Jesse kissed me, and I kissed him back with all that I held in my soul. Total adoration. When I pulled back, I laughed and said, “We’re getting married!”
“We’re getting married,” Jesse said, and as I looked at him on the bed, a few weeks away from reclaiming his life…again, I realized I didn’t want to wait.
“Now,” I said to Jesse, and his lips twitched. “I want to marry you as soon as we can.” Jesse stroked my hair back from my face. “I love you and you love me and you’re walking into remission, and I just want our life to begin. If I’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that we can’t waste time.” Calmness washed over me. “You asked me to marry you tonight or tomorrow or whenever I liked.”
Jesse held his breath.
“I pick as soon as we can,” I said, then held my breath as I waited for him to reply.
But this boy, this playful, rule-breaking country boy only returned my smile and said, “We’ll need a license.” I nodded, trying to quickly work through the semantics in my head. “Butthen there’s a chapel on the hospital’s ground floor.” He let that idea burst into the air above us and it sounded like fireworks. Jesse ran his lips over the ring that now lived happily on my finger. “You’re going to be my wife, Junebug. Mywife.”
I kissed his lips and said, “My husband.” I let that settle between us, then added, “I cannot wait.”
CHAPTER 31
June
The warm breeze washed over us as I tried to keep onwriting. Even writing a sentence now took me so long. But I was close to the end of the story, and I was determined to finish.
Our oxygen tanks gave us both much-needed air, and tiredness began to drag my eyelids down.
Jesse was already asleep beside me on the egg chair. I ran my finger down his face. Three weeks had passed since we’d been married. Three weeks of talking and loving and being safe in one another’s arms.
And three weeks of falling fast into the afterlife’s awaiting arms as well. We could no longer walk, and some days we slept all day, the pain meds making it too difficult to stay awake. But we were still here, loving and laughing and cherishing every numbered breath.
I kissed Jesse’s bare arm. “Baby,” I said, deciding it was time for us to go back to inside. Night was drawing in and the orange sunset we loved was trailing across the sky. Ginger grazed on the grass, close by. He had kept close to our spot for the past couple of weeks now, as we both knew that, one night, we would stop coming out here all together.
“Jesse,” I said again, but he didn’t stir. Panic came quickly as I tried to shake him awake. When his arm fell limply at his side, my heart began to tear. “Jesse!” I said, louder now. I pressed the emergency button I wore around my neck and Susan and Bailey came running from our room and out onto the porch.
“I can’t wake him up!” I said, urgency in my weak voice. “I can’t wake him up!”
Susan lifted me and placed me in my wheelchair. Bailey didn’t even bother with Jesse’s chair. Instead, he lifted him and rushed him into our bedroom, laying him on the bed. As he did, Jesse’s Longhorns cap fell to the ground.
Bailey began working on him, paging the team, but I couldn’t stop looking at the baseball cap. Jesse never took it off. He needed it on his head. In seconds, the door burst open, and Dr. Duncan and his staff filled the room.
