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Walking out, I see Charlie coming into the house, and his eyes don’t even scan the room. As if my house has always looked like this. “My stuff is gone.” I blink twice. “Like, every single piece of everything is gone.” I turn around, wondering if I should call the police. I put my hand to my head. “How did they take all of the stuff and not leave anything?” I look at him, and he doesn’t even look fazed that someone broke into my house. “All of my things are gone.”
“They aren’t gone,” he reassures me, his voice not rising like mine. “I moved it out.” He walks into the room, standing in front of me. “We moved it out, started this morning when you left. Just finished not long ago.”
“Who is we and where did you move it to?” I ask and he just looks at me. His beautiful face tries to fight smiling at me, but he just smirks and then grins. The face I look for every single night I’m behind the bar. The face I look at right before I fall asleep. The face I wake up to each and every single day and have for the last eight months. The face I want to stare at for the rest of my days.
“Me and a couple of guys from the barn. Your brother came and helped.”
“Brady came here?” I say, pointing at the wooden floor. “To help you move my things out?”
“Yup.” He puts his hands in his back pockets, the T-shirt pulling against his chest.
“Where are my things?” I ask again.
“Took them to my house, our house now.”
I put my hands on my hips. “You took all of my things over to your house?”
“Our house,” he corrects me. “It’s been over six months. I’m done with this back-and-forth bullshit. Half here, half there. Playing heads or tails to decide where we sleep at night.”
“So you thought ‘hey, let’s just take all her stuff to my house’ instead of talking to me about it?”
“Yup.” He nods. “Another thing, besides you moving in with me.” He takes one hand out of his back pocket, tucks it in his front pocket, and takes something out before getting down on one knee. The phone drops from my hand, clattering onto the floor. “We’re getting married.” My hands go to my face. “I want you to move in with me, and I want to marry you. I’m not waiting forever either. Meaning, if I could convince you, I would do it tomorrow.” He holds out the ring. “I’m not wasting more time with you not being my wife,” he says softly. “I want to have my ring on your finger. I want your ring on my finger. I want to have babies with you. I want to fight with you for fun.” I laugh since we never, ever fight. It’s a strange thing; maybe it’s because we’ve been friends for so long, but there are no fights. “I want it all, and I want it with you.”
“Charlie.” That’s the only thing I can say.
“That isn’t how you say yes,” he jokes. Taking my hand, he places the ring on my finger, and I gasp when I look down. “I don’t want to hear anything either. I went with my mother.”
“This is massive,” I declare, looking down at the huge ring on my finger.
“You can hand it down to our daughter or our son, whichever you want.”
“I want my father to walk me down the aisle,” I say. “I don’t know how much time we have.”
“Does that mean you’ll marry me?” He smiles, and I grab his face in my hands.
“That means I’ll marry you. Tonight, tomorrow, this weekend.” I kiss his lips. “In this lifetime and the next, I will marry you each and every single time.” He gets up from his knees, swinging me around. “You are everything I’ve ever dreamed of but thought I would never get.”
“Dreams come true, baby, we’re proof of it.”
Five days later, in the middle of his backyard, with all our family and friends, wearing a wedding dress I didn’t even think would be possible to get on such short notice, my father walks me down the aisle to the man who made me see that I am worthy. Who showed me what unconditional love is. Who showed me what real love feels like. I became Mrs. Charlie Barnes.
Epilogue Two
Charlie
Five years Later
The soft bells ring and my eyes flutter open, taking in the almost dark room. The sunlight tries to come through the side of the shades. I turn to my side to stop the alarm from ringing, shutting it down before I turn the other way, reaching for Autumn. “Morning,” I mumble as my hand touches the empty space where she is supposed to be sleeping.I get up on one elbow, looking over at the baby monitor by her side of the bed, and see Landon, our three-year-old son, still in his bed, “Baby,” I say softly, looking back at the door to the bathroom and seeing it open but no noise coming from there. I flip the covers off of me, getting out of the bed, and looking down at the phone that is right next to the picture of the three of us, taken last summer when we went to my parents’ house. Autumn is tucked to my side, her arms around my waist, while I hold her shoulder with one arm and Landon with the other.The three of us posing for the camera. It is such a beautiful picture I also had one made for my office.
Grabbing a pair of shorts before I walk out to the kitchen and see it’s empty also, I look around. “Autumn,” I say her name louder, looking around the room and spotting pictures of us all over the place.
The table in the corner of the living room still has Jennifer in the middle, with pictures of us all around it. I’m about to take out my phone when I look out to the back patio and see her sitting in the swing. I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding, as I make my way to her. Pushing open the back door and then the screened storm door, her head turns to look at me. “What the fuck.” My voice is tight, and her eyebrows shoot up.
She has one leg tucked under her as she pushes the swing with her other foot. It’s the same swing she had at her house; we just moved it over to ours. " Good morning to you, grumpy pants.” She is wearing a loose, long-sleeved gray, off-the-shoulder shirt with matching shorts. That is exactly what she wore to bed last night before I peeled it off of her. She holds the white coffee mug in her hands. " Did someone get up on the wrong side of the bed?”
“No.” I sit down next to her, wrapping my arm around her waist and pulling her to me. She holds the coffee cup above her head, laughing as I tug her over my lap and she straddles me. I bury my face in her neck as I wrap both arms around her waist. I close my eyes and my heart starts beating normally now that she is in my arms. “How am I supposed to make you breakfast in bed for our anniversary if you leave the bed?”
She leans the side of her face on my head. “Happy anniversary,” she responds softly. “I think you gave me my gift this morning, at like three, when I got up to use the bathroom and came back to bed, and you mauled me.”
