Something Worth Saving (40 page)

Dispatch to command, is roll call complete?

Working on it now.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Aubrey

H
E CARRIED
the burden on his heavy shoulders when he didn’t need to. With eyes that held emotion, he gave me a glimpse, and for the most part, I ignored that glimpse.

Mostly because I didn’t want to look at him and see resentment in his eyes.

Fire can destroy everything. Love can destroy everything.

Maybe I felt guilty. I knew I shouldn’t, but I did. It couldn’t be helped. There was a part of me that didn’t realize how bad Ridley’s intentions really were.

There are times when you can’t give in. You can’t give up. Because if you do, what was the fight worth in the beginning?

These things in your life, they happen to you and they change you. They do. Over time, they change you in subtle ways. Maybe it’s a different route to work because of a close call at an intersection. Maybe it’s never eating at your favorite restaurant against because of that rancid meat you had one time.

My point?

All that shit takes a toll on you. Your decisions, your beliefs, all different in some way. You may not see them, but others do. They see it when you tense up at that intersection, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter, slowing down. They show in the way you avoid the meat and order a salad.

If Ridley hadn’t cheated on me in high school, who’s to say I wouldn’t have married him, had babies with him. But he did, and I found Jace again.

Because of the way I felt knowing Ridley had cheated on me, I would never do that to Jace. Ever. It changed me and the way I regarded relationships.

Here’s what I learned from that. There’s something worth fighting for. You can take any situation out there, and there’s something worth fighting for. Maybe it’s independence, communication, trust, love . . . all worth fighting for, if you ask me.

Jace and I had fallen in love for a reason, and that was worth fighting for.

In a way, a very sad way, Logan’s death had brought us together again and made us appreciate that what we had. It made us question a few things. Having doubts like this didn’t make us feel better or even keep us safe. But it did teach us one thing: cherishing what we had while we had it.

Most believe you don’t choose who you fall in love with, and I believe that. But I also believe you choose
how
you love.

There’s no fairytale. Life is what you make of it.

Sound familiar? It should. It is shown in countless works of literature and even commercials, but you never truly think about what that really means until you’re forced to.

We were forced to.

There’s some truths that I refused to believe until now. When you’re someone who wants to know why all the time, sometimes it’s nice to just know something is right and always will be. It doesn’t have to be perfect. No matter what happens, I think we are with who we’re with for a reason.

T
HE SEATTLE
Pier 50 was one of my favorite places to be. It was on this very pier that I told Jace I was pregnant with Gracie.

The buildings and their history, each one conveying its own story, written in the cracks and broken windows of a part of town fallen victim to crime and frequent drug use.

As the night took over, I could hear the water, the way it flowed to the south, rippling with the wind, rising up and crashing down against the blackened wood that held us high above the freezing waters beneath our feet.

Jace had taken me out to dinner tonight after I was released from the hospital and then blindfolded me. Now here we were, at the pier.

“Certain days are carved in our memories for a reason.” Jace pressed his lips to the side of my head as we walked. “I want this day to be there.”

The air was frigid. Everything was coated in frost, shivering cold, but one heart kept me warm. It was the one placed against my back, guiding me along those frosty planks.

“Keep your eyes closed,” he whispered in my ear, moving to come around to stand in front of me.

His hands disappeared, dropping to his sides. “Okay, open.” His smile warmed me when I opened my eyes, and then his gaze dropped to his hands. In his palm was a gold lock and key.

“The key is thrown in the water to symbolize an unbreakable love.” His breath came out like steam as he laughed lightly. “This isn’t a ‘lock of love’ bridge, but we have memories here on this pier. Good memories.”

Immediately I was crying. I’ve wanted to go to Paris since I was a little girl. Here he was, bringing a little piece of it to me.

I looked him with the Sharpie in his hand and the lock in the other. Pulling the cap off with his teeth, he glanced up at me with a smile and then wrote the words:
Her desire
on the side of the lock that was engraved with dates. On the other side he wrote the words:
His fire
.

I had a thing about dates.

The first date was the day we met when we were six. September 7, 1989.

The next date was today. December 24, 2012.

“You know the first date.” His brow arched, a coy smile. “At least you’d better . . . ”

I nodded eagerly. “I do.”

“Nobody will ever be able to see this.” He held the lock up. “Usually the lock is put on a fence or something like that. But this represents our memories and ours alone.”

There was something very special about that.

“I say we make this tradition our own and keep the lock. We have nothing else, but we have this.” He held it grasped in his palm, fingers closing around it. “And we throw away the key to it.”

I don’t know if you can hear a heart flutter. But mine did.

We looked over the pier as the key hit the water. He whispered in my ear, “I love you.”

I felt Jace lower his face to mine, his breath hitting my lips.

His lips trailed across my jaw stopping in their path to kiss my lips and forehead, his nose delicately nudging against mine.

His lips were there next, brushing lightly against mine, soft and feather-like.

When he finally closed the distance, pressing gentle kisses to my lips, a sigh of contentment fell from me.

My hands soon found their place in his shirt, immediately fisting it in my hands.

“I love you,” I told him over and over again.

It was times like this when the truth behind what we knew and what we felt gave way, and we were left with what we needed. What we needed to say. What we needed to feel. And more importantly, what we needed to believe. We needed to believe in this.

There was also a point when we’d had enough. Enough pain, enough sadness, and enough loss.

W
E MADE
our way back to his parents’ house where we were staying, the kids sound asleep in their makeshift beds on the floor. They were asleep by the time we got back from dinner, and I didn’t have the heart to wake them, even though I just wanted to see their smiling little faces after the perfect night with my firefighter.

For so long I had been afraid of what Jace did for a living; a fear I didn’t know was there. But I understood why we saved people now. He saved me, in more ways than one. I believe I was meant to be with Jace.

Jace waited for me in our bed, and once I was slipping between the sheets, the warm cotton heating my shivering, shaking legs, I began to warm instantly. Instead of turning away as he did so often before, he waited, his smirk getting bigger.

You see that right there? The silent way he adores me? That’s what makes this worth it.

Yesterday doesn’t matter. We had right now.

His smile gave him away, his gaze traveling the length of my body. “Come with me . . . again.”

“It’s, like, two in the morning.” I couldn’t imagine tonight getting any better. Yeah, sex would have been good, but we were shacking up with the kids, so that wasn’t going to happen.

“So?”

I wasn’t sure what to make of this night.

I went with him as he led me to his parents’ backyard. I could see the glow from the large windows that overlooked a snow-covered hill.

As we walked outside, freezing, I might add, he led me to a path lined with candles.

“Shanna hooked me up . . . ” Glancing over his shoulder at the glass vases he’d placed candles in, he frowned at the ones that wouldn’t stay lit. “In the movies, they have people who keep those lit. I’m sure of it. I’ve lit that fucker over there three times now.”

We both laughed lightly, his and my nerves relaxing slightly. I knew what this was when I walked outside, but it still didn’t prepare me. I was nervous. For more than twenty years I’d thought about this day. And here it was.

Now what? Was this what I thought it was?

And then he asked.

“You’re heat.” His fingertips moved from my lips to the left side of my chest over my heart. “You’re fire . . . ” And then his fingers came to rest between my breasts. “You’re the breath in my lungs . . . ” And then he paused mid-sentence and frowned. “I’m not good at this. I know that I love you and you give me all those things I just said. I don’t have anything else.” He shrugged. “There are a lot of things I could say to you right now. Most of which would be fitting and probably everything you would want to hear me say. But then I remember that we’re far from ordinary, and you deserve more than ordinary.”

When I looked down at his hand, the white snow around us caught the edges of the diamond and made it sparkle even more, with daggers of blue, yellow, and white emitting from it.

My eyes found his again, but only for a moment before his eyes lowered to the ring as he placed it in the palm of my hand. “Please?”

When I didn’t say anything, he looked so incredibly nervous.

“I’m fucking this up, aren’t I?”

“No!”

My gaze fell to a white gold ring set with an emerald-cut diamond.

Oh, my God. Am I dreaming?

I looked at him, and silence took over, captured by his blue eyes. Alight with happiness, they said it all. He loved me. He’d wanted this all along. He wanted
us
. The cool, crisp air froze my nose, fingertips tingling as my breath rolled out. Each inhalation gave me a better understanding of what I’d missed.

You hear that?

It’s the sound of knowing. Knowing that what we have right now was worth all the tears, worth the ache, worth the break. It was something.

He sighed when I didn’t answer, looking scared. “I’m a loser. That was a lame proposal, wasn’t it?”

“Are you sure, Jace?”

He nodded, giving me an almost child-like look. “It’s what I want.”

The warmth of his hand against my cheek burned my skin. With the cool air, I wanted to keep it there to bring to life what was suddenly frozen, like my voice.

I could only stare at him when he spoke those words, because a thousand different things I think I’d never felt before crashed over me.
This is real. He’s really proposing to me.
My chest felt like there was a knot in it.

Finally his words were beginning to sink in. Jace was asking me to marry him.

Jace Ryan. He wants to marry me.

“Uh . . . you’re supposed to say something.” His nervousness was taking over. “I’m sure it’s a three-letter word and starts with a ‘Y.’”

As if I would actually say no.

I’ll be honest. I’ve wanted to marry Jace Ryan since I was six years old. I would be lying if I told you any different.

To be here now, staring at a ring in his hand, was something I almost couldn’t imagine.

Is this real?

If I didn’t think it would distract him, I probably would have punched myself.

“Still waiting . . . ”

“Sure,” I said casually, as if I were agreeing to go on a date, not marry him.

And then he brought the ring to my finger while smiling like a little boy. “You’ve always held a piece of me right here in these hands. My heart, your desire, my fire, it’s what we are. Here’s a piece of me to keep with you always,” he said, sliding the ring on my finger.

No words. None.

“Do you like it?” His smile tugged his mouth again as he waited for my answer.

Okay, I had a few words.

“I love it.” My heart started beating faster when I looked at the ring again.

And here came his sureness. “I knew you would.”

“Did you really just propose to me?” Apparently I still couldn’t wrap my head around this.

“I did.”

“Took you long enough. I’ve only been waiting twenty years,” I said, repeating but revising a little his words from the day after my alleged arson, back when we met up again.

Throwing his head back, he laughed.

Anything can take you back to the past. A smell, a sound, words . . . I took us back to where we needed to be in that moment. Remembering why we were saving this.

As the wind picked up slightly, I shivered as his hands wrapped around me.

Jace looked at me and breathed, waiting for my gaze.

Looking over my shoulder, he glared when the last candle went out.

With a slight smile, one that curved only half of his beautiful lips, two shaky fingers touched to my heart. “I hope this one never goes out.” I felt the sting in my eyes at his words, words I’d never thought I would hear someone like Jace say.

He lifted my hand to his mouth, brushing his lips over my finger. Specifically and tenderly, my ring finger, which now held a piece of him he had never given to another.

A sudden chill came over me. Probably because it was snowing and we were standing outside at two in the morning.

It was the perfect Jace proposal, though. Exactly what I didn’t expect him to do. Most of the time you expect the standard proposal. This was nothing of the sort.

When I least expected it, he asked a question, a pleading question.

While laughing in the snow, freezing my ass off, I said yes.

He took my heart and set it on fire, a flaming-hot mess for him. Sooner or later that spark will fade a little, and you’re left with a flickering flame. It’s up to you to cut the wick and get it burning evenly again.

Sometimes I think we forget how to be happy. How to tell truth from lies and how to love unconditionally.