Page 136 of The Choices I've Made

I ran as quickly as I could in the deep sand. With a wide smile spreading across my face, I leaped into his arms, feeling happier than I had ever felt.

“You haven’t read my last note yet.” He laughed.

“I love you,” I said, kissing his face all over.

“Well, I love you, too, but would you let a guy talk?”

I laughed, letting my feet sink into the sand.

A smug smile tugged at his lips before he sobered slightly. “A long time ago, I buried something on this beach. Something precious to me. I always swore I’d come back for it one day.”

He pulled something out of the pocket in his shorts—a small wooden box.

My eyes darted to the side of us where a large hole had been dug in the sand. “Wasn’t this your art project senior year? You really buried this?”

He nodded. “Fourteen years ago.”

“What is it?” I asked.

Placing it in my hand, he whispered, “Why don’t you open it and see?”

My hands shook as I did exactly as he’d said, pulling open the top of the intricately carved box. There, inside, was another box. But not just any box. A velvet ring box. My eyes instantly flooded with tears.

“But, fourteen years ago, we were—”

“Babies, I know. But I still knew, Molly.”

I pulled out the tiny box and cracked open the rusty hinges and my hand instantly went over my mouth as I gasped. He was serious. A single diamond ring sat nestled inside.

“I saved up every cent since the day I was fourteen, and I bought that ring on my eighteenth birthday. I buried it the morning I left, unsure of what the future held for us but positive about only one thing—that you and I belonged together.”

He carefully took the ring from my shaking hands and dropped to one knee in the sand. “Will you do me a favor and read the note now?” he asked, handing me the last rose.

I sniffled, grabbing the note that hung off the flower.

Tears fell harder as I read the words aloud,“Will you marry me?”

All the emotions poured out of me into one giant crying mess. “Yes,” I whispered. “Yes!”

He placed the ring on my finger and wrapped his arms around me. We spun around on the sand, laughing and crying together, enjoying our moment.

Because it had finally arrived…our forever. Maybe not the fairytale the two lovesick teens had envisioned so many years ago on this very beach, but this was real. This was honest and every choice we’d made had brought us to this very moment.

A moment of endless possibilities…together.