Say You Will (The Alexanders 5)

A perfect day to fall in love.

“You said I looked like an old friend of yours? Won’t that be weird for you?” Mara stared at him, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

He knew it was a gamble, coming here, playing this game. But the way they’d met would always be a black mark against him.

“It’s a weird coincidence for sure. I had to come up and meet you just out of curiosity. But now that I’m here, I find I want to talk to you just because I’m enjoying it so much.”

Mara smiled tremulously. He could see how hard she was working to keep her emotions in check.

“I can’t do this, Trent. Not again. I can’t compete with your real life. For a really long time, you couldn’t face it all and I understand that. I really do. But now that you’ve dealt with some stuff, you can go back to your life. Go back to the Upper East Side and the parties and summers in the Hamptons. Get back to where you would have been if Tia hadn’t died.”

“Is that what you want me to do?”

“I want you to be who you’re supposed to be. But that doesn’t mean that it’s easy for me.”

“You keep talking about my real life but this is what's real. The man I am with you is who I'm meant to be. All the rest is what's the lie.”

She fell quiet and they walked a few minutes in silence, the only sound the wind in his ears and the calls of the gulls overheard.

“I can’t just forget everything that happened, Trent. That would be like erasing history. I can’t just pick up where we left off like my heart wasn’t shattered. I can’t marry you.”

“Marry me? That would be awfully forward for our first date.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Be serious.”

Suddenly inspired, Trent turned to her and said, “I am serious. Tell me this, did you love me?”

She tried to tug her arm back. When he wouldn’t let go, she narrowed her eyes at him. “Of course I loved you. I would have done anything for you. How could you even ask me that?”

“Did you want to be with me forever?”

“I wanted more than forever with you.” Mara gave up trying to yank her hand back and settled for glaring at him instead. “I wanted us to die together and then be ghosts and haunt our grandchildren. Are you happy now?”

“Not nearly. I haven’t been happy for a long time. Not since the day I came home to that half-empty closet and realized that I’d driven away the most extraordinary person I’ve ever known.”

She sucked in a shocked breath and then her hand clenched in his. “Oh, damn it. You’re not allowed to do that. You can’t just show up here and make me remember why I loved you.”

He tugged her to one of the benches. She sat down and then pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed her cheeks. He tipped her chin up and looked into her eyes.

“If you had this to do all over again, would you? I know I hurt you. I’ll never be able to atone for that part, even though I’ll try. But in the end, do you think our love was worth the pain? Did I make you that happy?”

He held his breath waiting for her answer, sure she could tell by now how much her answers meant to him.

She seemed to have resigned herself to his strange line of questioning because this time she answered without any fuss. “I’m clearly a masochist because yes, I would do it all over again. As much as this hurts, I can’t imagine a world where I don’t know you. A world where we could pass each other on the street and have no idea what we were missing.”

His heart leaped at her answer. Her words perfectly captured everything he felt as well. “Well then, Miss Simmons. I just have one more question for you.” He leaned down, brushing a soft kiss over her forehead.

“What’s that?” She leaned into his caress, like she was as starved for touch as he was.

“Want to get a coffee with me sometime?”

Epilogue

TRENT’S EYES FOLLOWED his fiancée as she wove her way through the room. Her curvy figure was wrapped in an elegant cream tea-length dress that Sophia had special ordered from some boutique they both loved. Her dark hair was wound up on her head and woven through with white flowers and ribbons. She’d insisted their engagement party have a Midsummer Night’s Dream feel to it and he thought she looked every inch a sexy wood-sprite.

She looked up and when she caught his eye, winked. Trent had to smother a laugh as she was immediately drawn away by her mother who no doubt wanted to bring up some new detail they needed to add to their wedding planning. Mara hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell her mother that they were planning to elope. Trent voted for them not telling anyone. All he wanted was to make Mara his bride.

The sooner the better.