you need me. This is not us running away.”
“I know,” I tell him with a sad smile.
A few hours pass, and Carter finally comes out of his room, his hair wet from a shower. “I feel like we’re wasting this city,” he tells me with a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Logan and Quaid are going to meet up with us. Let’s go out.”
“Really?” I ask, hope building inside of me that maybe they are deciding to salvage this trip after all.
We leave the room hand in hand. Night has fallen, and there’s a beautiful energy out in the streets. The rain has finally stopped.
Carter and I stroll through the streets hand in hand. He points out things he thinks I might like, but he obviously still hasn’t realized that I would like anything as long as it involved one of them.
“Look at that,” I tell him excitedly, pointing to a large bridge stretched out in front of us.
He smiles at me, and this time, it kind of looks real.
“That’s Charles Bridge. Evidently, it’s a must see at night when it’s all lit up.”
“It’s beautiful.”
I squint and see two figures waiting at the start of the bridge. It’s Logan and Quaid. My heart settles at the sight of them. My body has been on high alert since they left. Now that I’ve reunited with them, I can relax again.
I’d rather them yell at me than disappear any day of the week.
But there’s no yelling when we reach them. Instead, Logan brushes a kiss across my cheek, and Quaid squeezes my hand. We set off across the bridge.
It really is incredible. You can see Prague Castle right beyond the bridge, and there’s street performers set up along the bridge to entertain us the entire way.
We don’t really talk, and that’s all right. I just want to be with them in whatever form that takes right now.
We get to the other side of the bridge, it’s a little ways away from the others walking the bridge, and we have some privacy for the first time on the walk. The guys suddenly look at each other. They stop, and nervous butterflies take flight in my stomach.
Of course, they planned something.
Taking a deep breath, Logan suddenly kneels in front of me, pulling out a familiar looking light blue colored box from behind his back.
My eyes water, because I hate this.
Logan opens the box.
It’s empty.
I look at him confused. “What…”
“We’ve known we were going to marry you since we were just kids, baby. And your news hasn’t changed that fact. But we’re not going to propose like this. We’re going to beg you to let us ask you the most selfish thing we could possibly ask. We’re asking you to do the surgery.”
I open my mouth to object. But Quaid sinks down on a knee in front of me next, cutting off what I was about to say.
“Please, Princess. Please try,” he starts to cry. Beautiful tears fall down his anguished face. “If you don’t exist, I don’t exist. You’re my soulmate, and if you don’t try for me… You have to try.”
Carter falls to his knee next, and I’m resigned at this point. “I’m not going to ask you to do the surgery. I’m going to tell you to do the surgery. I’m going to tell you to do it because I have a whole life planned out for us. We have kids, three of them. One of them is a little girl that looks just like you. We have a house that we built together. And we’re happy. We’re so fucking happy. And there’s no bad days ever. You have to do this surgery because we deserve that plan. We deserve that life. Our story isn’t allowed to end like this. I won’t allow it.”
My poor boys. “Okay,” I whisper to them, unable to say no. Unable to completely destroy that dream that they have for us.
And despite my best attempts, something tries to take root in my soul.
It feels a little bit like hope.
Chapter 18
Now
_____________________________________
Valentina
Butterflies threaten to fly away with my insides as we walk out into the bright sunlight.
“It kind of feels like we’ve walked into the land of Oz,” I remark. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Logan and Quaid exchange looks, amused.
Although, they can’t really disagree with me. The colors here…they almost defy description. They’re almost too bright. The air here just seems cleaner, more blue, if that’s possible. The mountains and hills are an