Dreams of 18

My thighs that were still around his hips, tightened and I cupped his jaw. “Really?”

“Yeah. I think…” He swallowed, giving me a vulnerable look that tugged at my heart. “I think it’s real. It’s a memory and I’m dreaming about it. I think… I want that.”

“Roses?”

“Yeah.”

I knew that crying would fuck with his head – he’d told me – but I couldn’t stop myself. I burst out crying like an idiot and he had to console me for the next ten minutes.

When I got myself under control, I said, “Let’s do it then. Let’s build the biggest rose garden in our new world.”

And we did.

Not only that though, the gardening books that I found stacked in a corner in his closet? Turns out, those are an extension of his dream.

My big, bad husband wants to own a nursery of roses and he’s even working toward it. This rose garden is the testament to that. He started expanding it right after he told me about his dream. And ever since last fall, he’s been supplying fresh roses to some of the local flower shops.

Since we live in Denver most of the time where he also works as a coach to a high school football team, he has a couple of guys working for him at the garden. They started helping him out as a favor until Graham could pay them.

One of them is my pen pal, Billy. I finally met him and he’s hilarious. He told me a lot of stories from the drunk days of Graham’s – both funny and tragic – and I swear I’m so glad that those days are behind us.

Anyway, it makes me smile every time I think of my beast working reverently with something so fragile and delicate. Something that’s his dream.

Like he’s doing right now.

He’s clipping thorns from them and cutting off the stems gently, and I know why.

I climb down the steps of the back door and approach him. He hears me, obviously and stands up.

When he faces me, I notice that he has a bunch of roses collected and he’s holding them in his big, rough hands.

Hands that I’ve always loved so much.

“Are they for me?” I ask when I reach him.

Summer breeze – yeah, there’s a breeze now and also sunshine in our part of the world – ruffles his dark hair as he takes me in, in his plaid shirt and sneakers.

His eyes roam over my body lazily, waking up goosebumps along the way.

When at last, he comes back to my eyes, he takes one of the flowers from the bundle and traces the side of my cheek with it. I have to curl my toes at that. At his both tender and seductive move.

“Yeah.”

“What’s the occasion?” I tease.

He reaches the side of my mouth and traces the curve of my lips as he makes me wait for his answer. He studies it, the curve and seam of my mouth for a second before bending down.

“It’s my baby’s birthday,” he whispers, his eyes all penetrating and intense. “Happy twenty-first birthday, Violet.”

Gosh, he’s always the first to wish me a happy birthday.

These days, there are a lot of people who do and they’ll all call me tomorrow, but his wish is the only wish I look forward to the most.

His wish is the only one that makes my heart beat faster.

Smiling, I take the roses from his hands, including the one he was tracing my mouth with. I bury my face in the blooms and smell them, their scent hitting me so strongly that I have to sigh.

“Thank you,” I whisper. “But that’s not the only occasion, is it?”

His eyes flick back and forth between mine, his tone both rough and teasing. “What’s the other occasion?”

I raise my eyebrows at him. “Remember your gift from last year? The one you gave me on my twentieth birthday?”

“Why don’t you remind me?”

Smiling, I shake my head at him.

It was his gift to me, see.

Our wedding.

We got married last year on my birthday.

It actually started when we saw a bride and a groom outside of a church that we were passing by back in Denver.

At their sight, I just stopped. I don’t know why but the bride was so pretty and glowing in her white dress and the groom couldn’t take his eyes off her. And there were so many roses, all pink and red and beautiful.

In that moment, standing there, watching them laugh and kiss, I saw a dream with open eyes.

I daydreamed about Graham and me. I wanted us to be that one day.

I wanted me to wear a white dress and him in a black suit and I wanted to be surrounded by his roses, holding hands and kissing.

Of course, I never said anything to him but who am I kidding? He guessed and a few weeks later, he proposed.