Page 65 of Forever King

“If that’s not something you want…”

I don’t finish the sentence because I don’t want to say the rest. I might not be the family man kind like my brothers, butI can’t continue to claim it’s okay if we never move on to more than what we are now.

Salem shifts her weight from her left foot to her right, like she’s uncomfortable with the entire conversation. “Kellen, I thought we weren’t into that.”

Oh, now I get it. She’s worried I’m talking about doing it now.

“I don’t mean anytime this year, but I think it might be something we want to start talking about. Weddings take a lot of planning.”

Her expression darkens, and she takes a step toward me, stopping to grab hold of the back of her chair where she just sat to share dinner with me like we do nearly every night. “Honey, I thought we were on the same page on this. I don’t want to get married.”

The words hit me like a sledgehammer to my chest. She’s never said anything like that before. It’s always been someday we can or maybe sometime. It’s never been a definitive she doesn’t want to get married at all.

“Like you mean now? Because I’m not thinking that.”

I watch for her to smile, a hint that she understands what I mean and feels something similar, but that never happens. Instead, her serious expression appears to harden as the seconds tick by after her announcement that she doesn’t want to marry me.

“Kellen, I don’t want to get married. I thought you understood that.”

My ego threatens to blow up our conversation, so I work to keep that under control as I say, “I thought we’d eventually do it. I mean, you always made me think it would happen someday. Are you saying that isn’t the case anymore?”

She hesitates for a few seconds before finally answering, “It’s not that I don’t love you. You know that, right?”

Still trying to keep cool, I shrug like this conversation isn’t beginning to feel like a knife through my heart and smile. “Sure. Yeah. I know you love me.”

“Good,” she says, finally giving me that smile I wanted. “Because I do love you. I love our life.”

She looks around our gorgeous kitchen with the chef’s range, stainless steel appliances, and quartz covered massive island every one of my brothers and their wives practically drool over whenever they come to see us. And this isn’t even the most gorgeous room in the house. Salem and I have an incredible home here, one I thought would someday be the place where Mr. and Mrs. Kellen King lived, not just Kellen and Salem.

“I love this place and everything about our lives right now. We’re both at a place in our careers where everything is firing on all cylinders. I don’t know why we’d want to change that.”

Confused, I begin to wonder if we’re having two different conversations. “I don’t know why marriage would change that.”

“I worry it would, and I’d hate it if this went away. I don’t want our lives to change.”

Before I can say that change is inevitable and necessary, something I’ve come to realize is important since I began working at King Industries, her phone vibrates on the counter. She hurries over to answer the call, holding up a single finger to let me know it will only be a second.

If it’s a work call, that’s a lie, and she knows it.

As the person on the other end of the call talks, she lowers her phone to her side and whispers, “It’s my sister. I’m going to take this in the other room.”

I don’t say a word, but it doesn’t matter because she disappears into the hallway on her way to her office, leaving me sitting alone at the table with my scraps from dinner. Our conversation replays in my mind as I try to understand why she treats the idea of us getting married the same way I treat the ideaof us having children. They aren’t the same, though. Kids change everything from the number of bedrooms you need to the hours you can work and everything in between.

Marriage doesn’t change much at all if two people love one another. We wouldn’t need to find a new place to live or change our work schedules if we said I do. We’d go on with our lives the same way we always have.

The only difference is she’d be Salem King, my wife, and I’d be her husband.

Why doesn’t she want that?

A bigger question is what does this mean for the two of us? I don’t know why, but thinking that we’d eventually get married has always been enough for me to believe that it would happen. I didn’t need a specific date or a plan for when it might happen. I just thought it would.

Now I have to accept the very real fact that the person I always figured I’d end up marrying doesn’t want to marry me at all. I guess it’s something that she likely doesn’t want to marry anyone else either, but what does this mean for the future of us?

Will Kellen and Salem always be the couple who fell in love, moved in together, and then remained romantic roommates and nothing more?

If that’s how it’s going to be forever, I don’t think I like that. Does it matter if I don’t, though, if I want to have Salem in my life?

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