He squeezed me in his arms. “I need you to forgive me.”
I wrapped my arms around him tighter, pulling him closer, while his warmth and presence stitched my soul back together.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” I whispered. “Only lessons learned.”
Ryan softly kissed the top of my head.
My mind drifted as he held me. I thought about how I would handle the first moment I ever came face to face with Lauren Delaney. Our paths would cross eventually, now that Ryan and I were officially engaged. There would be a Thousand Miles movie premier to attend in my future. My visions of that initial meeting were far from ladylike.
“Did Lauren ever confess?” I asked, recalling Kyle’s eleventh hour admission.
“She denied being involved… at first.” Ryan scratched his brow. He seemed reluctant to continue.
“It’s okay, just tell me.”
“She cried - hard. She said she should have never left me go,” he scoffed, “but my intensity when we were dating scared her or some shit like that. Well, that was her excuse for cheating on me.”
He pursed his lips with disgust. “After I told her that there was no way in hell I’d ever get back with her, she admitted that she was trying to keep me from making a huge mistake. She thought I was being impulsive and shortsighted with wanting to propose to you.”
I adjusted my cheek on his arm, mulling over his last sentence. I also pictured Lauren pleading and begging with him to take her back.
“And then Taryn fell silent,” he muttered. Ryan rolled over onto his side and stared at my face.
I swallowed hard before speaking, burying my pained eyes in my pillow. “I can almost pinpoint the exact time in my memory when that conversation happened. It was when you told me you needed time to think.”
Ryan pulled my chin up.
“I’m not going to deny that I didn’t think about what she said. Not the part about her being a dirty, little tramp and wanting me back,” he corrected. “The other part.”
“And?” I asked hesitantly.
He was silent for a few seconds. “Look in my eyes,” he instructed softly.
His request was confusing to me at first, because I was expecting him to say more after that. Instead, we lay still, gazing at each other for a very long minute. And then I saw it… it was all suddenly very clear to me. I saw our life together, our future, in brief snippets of time. I could not imagine being happy without him. I rested my hand on his cheek, guiding his lips to mine. When Ryan kissed me, life had meaning again.
“This last week, when everything turned to shit, that was a new low for me,” he admitted. “The lowest I’ve ever been.”
I laughed lightly. “I think I found a new level of low, ten floors down below the pit of despair.”
Ryan chuckled in agreement. “So what do you think all that misery means?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Well, for me… I think it means that I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone but you.”
He softly kissed my lips. “So if we both feel the same way, and we’re absolutely miserable without each other, then there can’t be anything impulsive or short-sighted about it, can there?”
I smiled and shook my head. “No, I guess not.”
The visions of a blissful future with this man I so desperately loved enveloped me in warmth. He was here in this room, in this bed, holding me once again!
How profoundly different this moment was from yesterday! The train that had been derailed, causing the unfortunate death of thousands of bits of my soul, was miraculously put back to right on the tracks again and all the dead suddenly got better.
Ironically, it only took several seconds after that for the remnants of my memory, recalling when my heart was shattered underneath the train, to creep back into my throat. I stared at the ceiling to collect my thoughts.
“I know what our problem is. We’ve both been cheated on, dumped, and wronged so many times that our pasts are keeping us from moving forward.”
Ryan slipped out a sliver of a laugh.
I gazed back into his eyes. “You thought that I was with Kyle - that there was something going on behind your back. And I thought you were going to leave me for someone like Lauren, who wasn’t all banged up and wrecked. We lost faith in each other.”
“I know. And I know these rings don’t erase what happened between us.” He adjusted the oval garnet on my right hand. “But they aren’t just jewelry to me either. Inside each of them is a message – a message of my commitment to you. I want you to be my wife, my partner, and my only lover, Taryn... forever. My eyes will never wander from you.”
“Neither will mine.”
“Then maybe we can help each other to trust more. Honey, neither one of us is a cheater. I’ve never done that to anyone I’ve ever dated – I’m guessing that you’ve never cheated on your past boyfriends either. We both know how much it hurts to be betrayed like that. So maybe we just have to always remember that it’s not in either of our personalities to be unfaithful. And I can tell ya that once we both say ‘I do,’ divorce is not an option - ever. We work through the crap, okay?”
I thought about why I’d been living in the pit of despair and surviving through years of broken promises.
“I know, but infidelity is still a deal-breaker for me,” I muttered. “You have to promise me that if I’m not… if you ever have that need, desire for something that our relationship is missing… if some actress…”
“You’ll be the first to know – way before it ever comes to that. I promise.” His fingers drifted down my cheek. “And the same goes for you too!
We talk about it – we fix it, we don’t let it break us apart,” he emphasized. “Regardless of how many completely screwed up, psychotic people try to meddle in our relationship!”
“This time, I’m killing anyone who tries,” I kidded. “Speaking of which…”
“What?” he softly urged.
“I want you to be completely honest with me and tell me if you are going to be working with girls you have intimate knowledge of. I know it’s uncomfortable and you’re going to be reluctant to hurt my feelings, but it will keep me from freaking out if I know all of the ugly details beforehand. I don’t want to hear about it from other sources or see it on the magazine covers in the grocery store. Not knowing that kind of stuff and then seeing it on TV does not help me trust you.” I figured that would help put my mind at ease.