Page 34 of Finding Fate
He chuckles, slipping the ring on the edge of my left ring finger. I can barely see in front of me from the tears in my eyes. “Gabrielle Katerina Thanos, I knew you were the only girl for me the second I saw you. Your crazy ass stole my heart at seventeen, and I don’t want it back. I want forever. The next time we’re forced apart it’s going to be because one of us is laying in a box like the one on top of that cake. I won’t be completely happy until I can call you my wife. Happy twenty-first birthday, baby. Will you marry me?”
I intake so much air I can barely speak, my heart expanding, and even though air is in my lungs, I can’t breathe. I smile, a tear sitting on my bottom lashes, and I nod. “Yes,” I squeak. He slides the ring down my finger. Good God, it’s huge. I’m going to beat his ass for spending so much money on a ring. It’s perfect.
“Atta boy!” someone yells.
Claps and shouts go off around us as he stands, grinning from ear to ear, pulling me in his arms. “Seeing you like this took my breath away. You look better than I remember. I thought I was going to trip up.”
I tighten my arms around him, my eyes falling on everyone behind him. Some people I know, and some I don’t, making me wonder where all the extra cars are. Sayler is standing by Riggan, still looking as beautiful as she did when we got here. Presley is by Konnor, looking identical to the girl that fell on her stomach inside, only less blood, and both of them are smiling at me. And then my eyes scan to the door I ran out of and there is a girl that is dressed identical to Presley, covered in red, standing beside the hoodie guy with the hood down, though I still don’t know who that is. The other guy removes the scream mask, who I instantly recognize as Landon from following their band. I laugh. “I can’t believe you pulled this off. You’re normally horrible at surprises.”
“I had a lot of help from friends and a Halloween staging company.” Ah, all that shit outside suddenly makes sense. He pulls back and brings his phone out of his pocket, before turning on the front-facing camera, and then places the clean side of his cheek against the clean side of mine, our bodies still hugged against each other. I look at us on the screen of his phone, both serious, and in this position we each together make a full skull. “Apart we’re only halves, but together we’re whole.”
And then he snaps the photo. Words will never express how much I love him. He took a day that’s been bad for me for so long and made it the best day of my life so far. I look at him. “I love you.” I smile, taking in his large, masculine frame of solid muscle so dressed up. “And I’ll never forget seeing you on one knee.”
He smirks. “Makes you feel powerful, doesn’t it?”
My grin grows. “It kind of does.”
“Only you can bring me to my knees, baby.” And then we kiss, because we’re crazy about each other, and that’s what we do.
Twenty-Two
Maddox
The club is packed with costumes of every kind imaginable as we walk into the interior of the large open space of the nightclub, bouncing lights and laser shows hitting all around us. Rap music is blaring through the speakers. Neon is done in many colors. Last week I noticed this club throwing a Halloween party on some flyers offering pre-sale tickets to basically reserve you a place before it reached max capacity since it was a holiday. We still had to wait in line, and we still had to pay a cover fee, but it was a ‘fast pass’ line beside the normal line. I bought us all one. I didn’t need any hitches in tonight like waiting in a club line for hours. I already had a lot of hard-earned money riding on tonight. For once, I needed it to be perfect.
Landon arrived around lunch. I had to bring him up to speed. I knew he’d be the best one for theScreampart. He’s always loved horror movies and scary shit, and it required no speaking, which he prefers. It makes him much more intimidating and harder to approach for most people. Kaysen has no fucks to give in regard to a girl, unlike Riggan and Konnor, and I needed her scared, which meant someone she wouldn’t recognize, so I let him be the ‘attacker’. Everyone had a part, and I knew there was a chance it’d fall through, but luckily everything went as I had plotted it in my head.
From the second Riggan grabbed Sayler from where he was hiding out to monitor when they arrived and pulled her to the back to join the rest of us, I was a nervous wreck, pacing around like time was standing still. Had she gone any other direction the effect wouldn’t have been the same, which is why I hired a company to do it right, to draw her in.
Then she ran through that door with long blonde hair and I almost fucked up the whole thing. I froze for a second as I got a flashback of the old Gabby, only better—older, matured, more beautiful. I had to jumpstart my brain before she ran into the pool. Seeing the surprise on her face when she caught sight of the ring is something I’ll never forget. I keep reminding myself she said yes. I’ve been wearing a goofy-ass grin all night that I can’t get rid of.
After it was over, we socialized and started the birthday-engagement celebrations with alcohol. Some of Sayler’s friends from the last party we had came so there’d be people Gabby could drink with that aren’t pregnant, like Morgan for one, who played the Presley look alike inside. Kaysen said they’ve hooked up a few times, and he’s tried to make it more, but given her being away at another school she doesn’t want a relationship right now.
We follow Landon to the bar, where he takes a seat on the one empty stool. I lean forward, next to his ear. “Order me a beer and her a walk me down. Just start a tab and I’ll cover it.”
He nods. I straighten and pull Gabby in front of me. She instantly starts dancing on me, already buzzed, her left hand wrapped around the back of my neck as she rubs her ass against my crotch. I could see it in her glazed eyes earlier. I run my hand up the length of her arm and lace my fingers with hers, already twisting the ring on her finger with my thumb as I lean in. She turns her head, our mouths close. “I’m scared to ask you what you spent. I would have been happy with less, even though I’ve never seen anything this beautiful.”
I smile and kiss the corner of her mouth, my right hand rubbing along her flat stomach over the short, tight, one-shoulder black dress she’s wearing that I’ve been wanting to rip off since I first saw her in it. “I’m not going to tell you. You’ll never find the receipt. I’ve been saving for your ring since I first told you I love you. I bought what I felt you deserved; nothing more, nothing less. I didn’t go into debt to buy it. The matching band that came with it is put up for when you want to say ‘I do’.”
She turns around, wrapping both arms around my neck, still dancing against my body. I grab her ass, swaying with her. “You have?”
“Yes. I don’t tell random-ass girls I love them. I’ve always known when I felt that way about a girl she’d be the one I was going to marry. My plan back then was to do it on your high school graduation night. I had more than two extra years to save.”
“And if I had not come to the multipurpose building that day?”
“It’d still be waiting on you, getting bigger. God knows I wasn’t interested in wrapping a diamond around anyone else’s finger.”
She’s looking at me, more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her. I loved her when she was young. I love her now that she’s a woman. I’m not going to dwell on it, but I wish I had gotten the middle too, watching her grow from that to this. “It would have broken my heart, you know, had you fallen in love with someone else. It’s one of the many reasons I deleted social media, terrified one day it would pop up that you were in a relationship or engaged. It already ate at my mind. I couldn’t have handled seeing it.”
My mouth tips. “You don’t know me at all if you think that would have ever happened. I’m not going to lie and say my family didn’t try, but it always ended with me telling them to stay out of my personal life.”
A fire lights in her eyes. “That’s because I gave it good. I made that dick love me too.”
I laugh out. “You could say that. No one ever said I love you quite like you. I could be angry enough to spit fire at you and you’d still be on my dick telling me to get the fuck over it, like that night I found out how old you were. Ten minutes after telling you we were through I was telling you I love you. Two days later I was praying for forgiveness over having sex with a junior high girl in a high school parking lot and then sneaking you out that night.”
She smirks at me. “I was hellbent on proving I could keep your dick happy just like a high school girl could. I wasn’t going to lose you over something I could do. Whoever said food was the way to a man’s heart was a dumbass.”
More laughter expels. “My life will never be the same without you in it. By the way, I like your hair.”