“That’s nice of you.” I nodded, as though this were an everyday occurrence. But inside, it only added to my trepidation.
More silence. Say something. I needed to say something. This silence held too much…
Too much what? Truth? How much more could the truth hurt?
“I always thought I’d get married here,” I finally said.
He looked up, as though I’d pulled him from some reverie of his own.
I nodded at the church. “From the first day we visited, I looked around this place and knew I wanted to get married right here.” I plucked a dandelion and studied it as I pulled all the little petals out. “Thought I’d baptize my babies here. Volunteer here. Move through life here. All right here.”
“And what about when it changed?” He asked, his blue eyes searching mine. Oh, how I’d missed those eyes.
“Changed?” I echoed.
“You know,” he said slowly, leaning back on his hands, “in all the places I’ve been, change follows you. Even if you stay in the same place forever, everything around you moves.”
“I know.” My voice was barely a breath. Everything had been perfect. Then he had come and changed it all.
There was another silence. He seemed unsure of what to do with his hands because he opened and closed them again, as though grasping for something I couldn’t see.
“I’m moving to Texas in three months,” he finally said.
And there it was. The words I’d been waiting for. The ones I knew would one day change the course of my life.
“I can’t…” My voice warbled, and it was a moment before I could speak again. He wasn’t inviting me to go with him. Just telling me. So did that mean this was goodbye?
“You can’t what?” His voice was unusually low and his jaw tight.
“I’ve tried to imagine life as it should be. Life here forever, living out my fate as I always imagined it.” I shook my head and laughed as tears began to spill down my cheeks. Finally, I got the courage to look him in the eyes. “But I can’t.”
His eyes widened, so I plunged in before I lost my nerve. I’d already turned this man down…and quite rudely at that. It was a wonder he was listening to me at all.
“I can’t see myself anywhere else or with anyone else.” I reached up gingerly to touch his cheek. “Derrick, I’ve lived six months without you, and I never want to do it again.” I paused. “At least, not without knowing I’m yours, and that no distance is going to change that.”
Before I knew what was happening, his hands were on my face, and he was kissing me with a heat that dove into my chest and twirled around my heart. When he pulled away, it was only to rest his forehead against mine.
“Do you know what it felt like,” he was breathing in short, ragged gasps, “running up to that school and thinking you and Jade were gone?” His voice broke, and his shoulders shook. Almost in a daze, I put my hands on them. At my touch, he cried even harder.
“I thought…” he choked. “I thought my life was over the moment I saw that building.” He looked back up at me, his eyes searching mine, desperate and fierce as his hands traced every angle of my face.
“I thought you were done with me,” I whispered. “After you left. After you left, and when Amy came back—”
“Jessie.” He sat up. “I have done nothing but regret those things I said to you since the moment they left my mouth. I’m ashamed of the way I treated you and pushed you away. I was just so afraid to lose you.” He shook his head. “But I was afraid that the moment I left, Newman or some other schmuck was going to make a move, and you’d come to your senses and marry one of them.”
“I tried.” I gave another strangled laugh. “But I couldn’t even make it through the first date with him before I knew it wasn’t going to work.”
“Why?” he breathed.
I smiled tremulously. “He wasn’t you.”
He reached behind him and pulled a familiar blue box from his pocket. And when he opened it, that familiar red rose glistened up at me in the afternoon sun.
“Marry me,” he whispered, “and I will make sure you can fly back here whenever your little heart desires. You can see your mother every weekend if that’s what you want.”
I opened my mouth, but he held his hand up.
“Please hear me out. Look, I have five years left in the military. But if those five years pass and you want me out, just say the word, and we’ll never move again. If you want to finish your degree, all you have to do is sign up, and I’ll make sure we can afford it. Just…don’t make me leave you behind again without knowing you’ll be there when I return. Because I don’t think I can handle that.”
