Page 149 of Merry Me
The one we’d imagined on a summer night with too many mosquitoes and not enough sense. The same one we’d been thinking of just last week, when everything came full circle beneath the snow and starlight and everything we couldn’t say until we finally did.
The pendant shimmered in the light—quiet, certain, sacred.
My throat tightened. Because tucked beneath the necklace was a small, folded note.
The paper was slightly crumpled, the edges soft like it had been carried for a while before being placed there with quiet intention.
Easton’s handwriting sprawled across it in thick, black ink—messy, rushed, familiar, and my heart thudded as I unfolded it, my breath catching as I read the words:
A thousand lifetimes wouldn’t be enough. Come find me under our stars. —E.
I stared at the note, the words sinking in like a stone dropped into water, rippling through every part of me.
A thousand lifetimes.
My throat tightened.
Tears blurred the ink, and I pressed the necklace to my chest, the pendant cool and sharp against my skin. A steady ache settled just beneath my heart—not from fear, not from walls—I didn’t have those anymore.
Just the weight of everything we’d survived.
Everything we’d found again.
And the impossible bigness of finally having it.
He must have slipped it into my suitcase before he left.
A quiet gesture. No theatrics. No fanfare. Just this—his heart, folded into velvet and ink.
My knees buckled, and I sank to the floor. The note trembled in my hand, the box still resting in my lap. The room buzzed with silence, just the clank of the radiator and the sound of my own breath, uneven and thick with emotion.
I missed him.
But more than that—Ilovedhim.
And I was done waiting.
I thought of the week we’d just had. The way we came together in stolen moments—hungry, quiet, desperate. The laughter spilling from our lips during MeMaw’s chaotic toasts. The way his hand never left my knee at dinner, like he couldn’t bear to not touch me for even a second.
The sound of his voice—low, warm—when he whisperedI’ve never stopped loving you.
Every touch, every look, had been a reminder of what we’d once had and what we could have again, if I could just find the courage to let go of my fears.
A slow, steady rekindling of something I thought we’d lost.
But it had never been lost.
It had just been waiting.
And I wasn’t waiting anymore.
Tears slipped down my cheeks—quiet, relieved tears—and my breath came in shaky, uneven bursts. I didn’t even try to stop them.
Sitting here in my cluttered, little apartment with a constellation in my hands and his love still echoing in my chest, I knew the truth.
Easton had chosen me.
Again and again.
