Page 200 of The Comedown

His chuckle is so dark it makes me smile. “So, fuck him?”

“Fuck him.”

“Damn, I love you. I’m sorry I started all that, then left you to deal with it by yourself. I’m sorry I haven’t been by your side to help you through it. I’m here now though and I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

“I love you, too, Julian. And I’ve missed you…a lot. But what happens now? Don’t you have to stay clean for a year or something before you can be in a relationship?”

“Since when do I follow the rules?”

“I’m serious. I don’t want to risk your sobriety if you’re not ready.”

“I don’t know if there will ever be a time that my sobriety isn’t at risk, Collette.”

I tuck my chin to my chest, understanding that statement wholeheartedly. Fighting addiction is not a one-time battle, it’s a series of daily battles leading up to a war that never really comes to fruition.

“But…”

My gaze lifts to him while my head stays lowered.

“Being without you, it’s hell. Drugs, alcohol, partying, they took me away from you. Mentally, emotionally, and then physically. I’m fucking done wasting a single second being without you. You were never an option to me, and I’m sorry I treated you like one. You’re it for me. Always, forever, and long fucking after.” He pins me with open sincerity, love, and hope. So much hope. “If you’re down?”

I push off the wall, stepping between his knees, then with a handful of his blond hair—now free of blue tips—I tilt his head back, and lick from his chin up to his nose. Over his groan, I say, “I’m down.”

My feet are lifted off the floor as Julian stands, taking me with him, then he spins us around and deposits me where he was just sitting.

“As the first and only woman to ever bring me to both my knees, it’s only right that you bring me to one.” Dropping to his knee, he holds up a small box, opening it to reveal a ring with a five-carat antique sapphire surrounded by dazzling diamonds. After a deep breath, he asks, “Will you be my wife?”

With my middle finger on his pulse, I feel his heartbeat as if it were my own, then I close the space between us, kissing him for the first time in seven months and tasting pure magic.

“Of course I’ll marry you,” I tell him after breaking for air. “But I prefer you on both knees.”

“I know you do, Poohbear.” His other knee hits the floor, and with a smirk only the king of the underworld could pull off, he says, “I got no problem worshipping my queen.”

Julian

Two and a half years later

I toss my keys on the counter, switching Lyric from my left arm to my right.

“Ayo.”

Holter freezes at the bottom of the stairs, his mouth guard hanging from his mouth while his face remains glued to his fucking phone.

“We leave in twenty minutes, so no…whatever the hell you do in there.”

He finally looks up at me with a snarled lip he picked up this past summer at football camp. “I’m just getting a shower.”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, okay. And I’m the Virgin Mary.” Propping Lyric in the crook of my elbow, I even slap my hands together, glancing skyward for effect.

Holter groans and stomps the rest of his way up the stairs. That kid jerks it in there, I don’t care what he says. I was sixteen years old too once. That’s basically all I did.

To pictures of his mom, but nobody appreciates when I say that.

“Twenty minutes!” I shout because fuck if I don’t gotta repeat everything three times for him to listen. I know I was a total shit when I was a teen, but damn, at least Holter’s got cool parents. At least he’s got parents, period.

“Why do I have to go again?” he pokes his head over the banister to ask because he also believes he needs to repeat everything three times, and apparently the first two conversations about this exact topic earlier didn’t take.

“Lyric.” I stand his sister up on the kitchen island, holding her hands tight. “Do you wanna see Mommy sing?”