Near and Far

“You know me at my best, and you know me at my worst. You know my past and my dreams for the future. You know me. I know the same things about you and I can say with absolute certainty that I will love you every minute of every day, Rowen. In this life, and our next, and our next if there’s such a thing as reincarnation. I was made to love you.” Jesse’s eyes lightened with every word, his face a plane of confidence. “Will you marry me?”

That was what it felt like. The moment when all of my past failures were worth it, when I knew all of my future ones would be, too. That was the moment when life makes sense.

“My answer to your question depends on your answer to mine,” I replied, trying to pretend I wasn’t totally reeling. Trying to pretend like I wasn’t about to grab on to Old Bessie for support.

Jesse didn’t even look surprised. He knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t be the girl to flap her hands, scream yes a million times, and unleash the floodgates. “What question is that?” He grinned up at me.

Pulling him up until he stood in front of me, the ring still in his hands, I met his eyes. “You know me at my best, and you know me at my worst. You know my past and my dreams for the future. You know me. So, Jesse Walker, will you marry me?”

One corner of his mouth twitched in amusement. “On one condition.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “If you’ll agree to marry me first.”

I laughed a few notes and couldn’t get my answer out fast enough. “Yes, Jesse. I’m yours. I guess we might as well make it official.”

I’d seen Jesse happy a million different times, but I’d never seen him happy like that. It was happiness in a way that staggered me. Happiness in its purest state. “And I’m yours. So why not make it official.”

It started raining right as I held out my left hand and Jesse slipped the ring on my finger. I didn’t take it as an omen or a sign of what was to come; I took it as a promise. No matter what kinds of storms waited for us in the future, we’d weather them together. Side by side.

“Jesse, there’s one more thing I wanted to tell you,” I said, needing to get everything off of my chest before we could properly celebrate. “The internship . . . I’m not going to—”

“Take it,” he said immediately. “You know and I know that you need to take that internship, Rowen. You have to take it.”

“But this summer . . . We’re engaged now. I want to spend the summer with you.” The internship was a phenomenal opportunity, but it was a job. It wasn’t a person; it wasn’t someone I loved. I was proving where my priorities were. At last.

“And I plan on spending the summer with you too. We’re engaged after all,” Jesse said with a smile. When he glanced at my ring finger, his smile went bigger.

My forehead lined. “How is that supposed to work if you want me to take the internship?”

Jesse pulled me close. “How’s that roommate search going?”

“What? Wait. No. No,” I said as all the pieces fit together. “Jesse, your dad needs you on the ranch. Summers especially. You can’t just up and leave in the middle of it to be with me.”

“Actually, I can’t think of a better reason to up and leave anything than to be with you.”

“Jesse—”

He shook his head. “I’ve already talked it over with my dad and mom. They’re on board with it, and I thought you’d be too . . .”

“I do want you to move in with me, of course I do, but Jesse . . . are you sure this is what you really want?”

“I know we can make it through anything, Rowen. The past couple of months have proven that to me. I know we could make it if we were far away from each other. I trust that. I have faith in that. The thing is . . . I don’t want to do it. I want to be near you. Every day. Every night. Why should I settle for you from afar when I can have you near me every morning I wake up?” His forehead pressed into mine. “Relationships are about compromise and sacrifice. I don’t want you to have to compromise this internship for me. Or me for the internship. This is my turn to sacrifice something. This is something I want to sacrifice.” Drops of rain slid between us, down our faces, and our clothes were becoming wet, but I felt nothing but warmth. “The ranch will always be there. The ranch will wait. I don’t want you to have to. Okay?”

I had so many points to argue, so many things that made that such a selfish option, but when Jesse looked at me like that after saying what he just had, I could only manage one word. And it wasn’t no.

“Okay,” I said, feeling a smile moving into place. I didn’t only have my boyfriend back—correction, my fiancé back—I would get to see him all the time. Every day. Every night.

Life and its proclivities for one-eighties . . .

Kissing me first, Jesse ran to turn Old Bessie off before coming back to scoop me into his arms. “I think you were wrong. I did need a change of clothes for this trip.”

I laughed as he ran for the apartment. It didn’t matter; we were both already drenched. “You won’t need any clothes for a while. You’ve still got some making up to do.” I winked up at him suggestively, and Jesse’s pace picked up. “By the way, how in the world did you get here? Since I know it wasn’t thanks to Old Bessie.”

He smiled as he continued sprinting through the rain. “I took a Greyhound bus.”

That right there was what I called a full circle moment.

Just outside the apartment, Jesse lowered me and backed me against the door. His hands braced against the door on either side of my head as his eyes locked on mine. “Thank you for saving me, Rowen. Thank you for coming and saving me.”

I lifted my hand to his face and traced each fervent wrinkle until it disappeared. “I didn’t save you, Jesse. I just helped you remember how to save yourself.”

“You helped me remember why it was worth saving myself,” he said gently, right before covering his lips with mine. We stayed up against that door for a while, kissing and making up for lost time. We kissed until I felt like I couldn’t kiss anymore. And then we kissed some more.

There are high points, and there are high points. That was mine, having a man like Jesse Walker to love and love me back, and knowing that no matter what came our way, we’d be ready for it.

The rest was up to us.

END