Page 115 of Wrecked
“You have been my reason for existing. My reason for holding on, even when giving up would have been so much easier. You kept my heart alive even when you didn’t think it was yours to keep anymore. But it’s always been yours, Pip,” I say with a shaky voice as I take her hand in mine.
“Marry me, baby.”
She stands over me sobbing before dropping to her knees in front of me. “Youare the reasonmyheart beats. My life has been tied to yours since you first showed me what it felt like to be fiercely protected and loved. The day your heart stops beating, mine will surrender alongside it. Our souls belong together no matter what realm they exist in. The very idea that I could refuse you would be like denying myself the air that keeps me alive. So, one hundred times YES, I will marry you! But…I need you to promise me something.”
“Anything,” I admit. She could ask anything of me, and it would be hers.
“I want forever. I don’t want just next week or next month. I want you to promise me a lifetime with you. Even if we spend it here.”
“As long as I’m breathing, I’m yours, baby. And I plan to be breathing for a long time.”
She leaps into my lap, knocking me backward onto the sand. She wraps her arms around my chest as she sniffles into the crook of my neck. We stay like this for several minutes before I pull away and turn her around to face the ocean. I pull the heart-shaped necklace out of my pocket and gently clasp it around her neck. She looks down and gasps in shock.
“My promise,” she whispers, turning around to face me again.
“Your promise,” I repeat.
“You still have this? After all this time?” Tears fall from her beautiful green eyes as she looks at me in question.
“Just because you left it behind for a little bit, doesn’t mean the promise was broken. I saved it for you, hoping you’d want it back someday. I brought it on this trip to help you remember us, the future we saw together. Thankfully, our luggage washed ashore so I could return my promise to you.”
“The heart of the ocean,” she breathes, looking at me rather than the necklace. “Thank you for saving it for me.” She leans forward and places a gentle kiss on my lips, then rests her head on my shoulder.
“Nate?” she breathes against my neck a few seconds later.
“Yeah, baby?”
“Do you think Katie has moved on?” Her voice quivers.
I sigh. I have no idea how to answer this. I want to believe that she’s moved on, that she is happy. But I also know how it feels to lose someone you feel like you had no control over losing.
My thoughts are dragged back to the night before we left for Brazil. Ellie had just run off to her room after hearing Katie close the bathroom door. I sat in the living room wondering how I was going to hurt a woman that I truly loved…just not enough to keep her.
I heard her crying in the bathroom, and my heart broke for her.
For us.
She knew.
She already knew.
Katie opens the bathroom door and walks down the hall to the living room. I can hear her soft steps getting closer, and my throat is thick with emotion.
I love Katie. But I’m not in love with her. She never even stood a chance. What I did to her was unfair…no, it was cruel. I put my family’s wellbeing above a woman I didn’t know and justified it with life or death. But now that we’ve reached the end of this arrangement, it feels impossible to hurt her like she doesn’t matter to me.
I never expected to love her.
I played with the heart of a woman I thought I could walk away from and feel nothing. I guess this is karma. In order to have the woman I love, I have to say goodbye to the woman who loves me.
Katie is all the things I would want…if Ellie didn’t exist. But Ellie does exist. So there is not a single part of my soul that yearns for her. My body doesn’t crave her. My heart doesn’t want her.
When she turns the corner, she’s not surprised to see me awake. She approaches the couch and sits across from me, folding her arms inward like she’s protecting herself.
“Did my sister go to bed?” Her voice has an edge to it that I’ve never heard before.
“She did.” There is no point in hiding that she was out here…she already knows.
“Why are you still engaged to me, Nathan?” she asks quietly.
