Briar follows just behind him. “Leave the lovebirds alone, narc,” she snaps before slamming our door shut.
“Thank you!” I call before turning back to Bennett, his hands still on my face and stroking my cheek now. “Bennett, I love you. I want to shred these divorce papers into a million pieces and spread them across the state of Oregon so they can never be pieced back together again. So, what do you say?”
“This isn’t what you actually want, though.” His gaze roves over my face, searching for answers. “I have faith,” he says urgently. “I have faith that we can find ourselves here again. I love you, Clover. I’ve never been so certain of anything in my life. After you and your mom left, all I wanted was to forget you. Every memory of you was a fresh pain, and even when I found ways to dull the ache, it never went away.Younever went away. And that’s how I know that for me, it will always be you, so I can wait. I can wait to see if you feel the same.”
I sniff, but it does nothing to stop the tears once they start to spill. With my hands balled into fists, I pound against his chest. “You stupid, gorgeous jerk! I’m going to have to start writing down rules again. No grand gesture stealing! This was supposed to be my big moment to tell you how much I love you, but now you’ve made me cry and I can’t beat that.”
His pupils flare with excitement and he steals a quick kiss from me. “Try.”
“Fine. You’re the worst and I love you, okay? I love that you always rub my forehead when I’m worried and that you have a smart mouth and that you do nice things but only when you think they’re in secret. And when I think about waking up and not being your wife, I feel completely empty like someone has gone and cut out all the most important parts of me. And that part of me is louder than the voice in my head that says we’re too young or that we got here for all thewrong reasons. Because we’re here. We’re here, Ben. And I don’t want to be anywhere else with anyone else. I don’t want to let us go just because we did this all backward.”
I’m rambling now. Bennett said all the right words, and I’m rambling. But I mean it. I mean it all. “I want to eat black-market grilled cheese with you and watch movies on our projector, and I want to have a song. Weneeda song. Couples have songs. When I get dressed every morning, I want to count the hours until you’re undressing me. I want to carve our names into this bed. I want to decorate a Christmas tree with you because it makes me so sad to think that we might not. I want to kiss you on New Year’s Eve and I want to buy each other stupid things on Valentine’s Day and I want to fight with you over chores and stealing blankets and—”
“We can do that. We can do all that,” he whispers. “I’ll buy you a Christmas tree pretty enough to be in a Hallmark movie.”
“I don’t care how fucking pretty the tree is, you snob.”
“I’m not a snob,” he retorts.
“Oh, really?”
He grins. “Maybe a little bit of a snob.”
“Are you really going to leave me hanging?” I ask him.
His hands drop away from my face and he takes my ring from me. With great care, he holds my left hand and presses my palm to his lips. He leaves a kiss there and then one on the tips of each of my fingers. “You’re sure?” he asks, the ring hovering above my finger. “I’ll love you all the same no matter what answer you give.”
“Bennett, if you don’t put that ring—”
He steals another kiss as he slides the ring on.
I moan against his mouth and his hand immediately moves to the back of my head to deepen our kiss, but I pull back only for him to growl in return.
“Let me at least get this ring on you,” I tell him. “These are my vows to you: We’ve spent all our lives growing together. Becoming new versions of ourselves. But if I have to figure out this life thing and get over the miserable fucking pain of being exposed and vulnerable, then I don’t want to do it alone. I want to do it with you. I pick you, Bennett. I pick you every time.”
His smile is broad as he holds his hand out to me.
I press his palm to my chest right above my heart, and even though our anniversary will always be a humid day in August, today, I decide, is when we really begin.
Then, because I have been frustratingly horny for weeks and because this wedding is in the privacy of our dorm room—our home—I pull his finger into my mouth, my tongue running along the length and the metallic taste of his ring lingering.
“Fuck,” he whispers, eyes wide and hungry.
In an act of lewdness, I suck on his finger as I pull it out of my mouth, his ring right where it’s supposed to be.
I bring his hand to my cheek again and nuzzle into the warmth. “With this ring, I thee wed.”
His eyes are hazy and love drunk. “I do. Till death do us part. To have and to hold. All of it,” he says. “All of it. Forever.”
“All of it forever,” I repeat back to him.
“So… we never did get a honeymoon,” he says.
“Finals first,” I tell him. “Honeymoon second.”
His hand skims the hem of my T-shirt, and my body responds immediately with goose bumps. “Well, we should probably study. For the honeymoon, obviously.”
“It’s the responsible thing to do.” I inch closer to him so that my lips skim against his with every word. “We might even have to pull an all-nighter.”
