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Frustration washed over me. It felt like we had been on The Road for more than a year, despite the reality of it being only a couple of months. Here we were, just hours from our destination, and having to wait even another minute felt unbearable.
I sighed.
“Okay,” I agreed. “We need them. So, we’ll stay here until the morning.”
“Thank you.” She kissed my cheek.
THAIS
Silence, awkward and noticeable, fell between us. I sensed something was off, but I just stared at the camp behind Atticus, thinking little of it. He had been out of it for a few days, and before that he had been ravaged by thirst and hunger and exhaustion and injury—I imagined it would take a few days more before he could feel like himself again.
“Thais—.” He reached out to touch my hair, but stopped just shy, and his hand dropped back into his lap.
“What’s wrong?” I slid my fingers through his ever-growing beard, troubled by his reluctance.
He looked downward.
“Remember when we first met,” he began, his voice fringed with stifled emotion, “and I vowed to get you somewhere safe? I told you I would do whatever I had to do to get you to Shreveport, and then…”
My hand fell away from his face in an instant; I felt something crushing my heart, and I stood up, as if I needed to be more prepared to handle the pain of his coming words. So I could run away? So I could kick him? So I could look stronger than I would be?
Atticus stood after me. And he just looked at me. And I hated the way he looked at me—I wanted to lay my hand across the side of his face.
“Just say it, Atticus…just say it,” I barked, my face I felt shadowed by resentment.
Atticus’ gaze veered off, and I reached out and grabbed his chin in my hand, forcing him to face me. How dare you! Don’t you look away from me! Don’t be a coward! I did not have to say the words aloud for him to know them.
He sighed.
“I told you I’d help you,” he finally said. “And then I’d leave you to live your life.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! Tears seeped from my eyes, burning, blurring my vision, but I could not wipe them away because my fists were balled, and my arms were stiff at my sides and I could not move them. “Say it!”
Hadn’t he already said it? Yes, he told me he would leave me to my life. But why did it feel so incomplete? What more could he possibly say?
Finally, I wiped the tears from my face, and then turned my back to him, because if I looked at him any longer I would…I would hate him. No. I could never hate him—I would hate myself for ever loving him.
“But I’m selfish, Thais Fenwick,” he told me in a soft voice. “I’m selfish and I want to be with you, and I’ll never leave you, even if you tell me you hate everything about me, I’ll never leave you.”
I turned to face him again, my heart in my throat, and before I could respond, or even understand how to respond, he said:
“I want you to marry me.”
He stepped up closer—I forgot how to breathe.
“Before we leave this camp,” he said, “I want you to be my wife. Because tomorrow is never guaranteed, now more than ever. And if I’m going to die, I want to die knowing you were mine, in every way.”
Overwhelmed by a tumult of incompatible emotions, I didn’t know what to do with myself; I was frozen inside my skin.
But then I fell into his arms. “I will be your wife.”
He smiled, and kissed the top of my head.
“Are you sure?”
I pulled away and looked up at him.
“Well”—I chewed on the inside of my mouth—“I mean, there’s not many men to choose from anymore—”
