agony. Drowning right along with me. Praying we’d come up for air, together. She wouldn’t leave me. Nothing could make her leave me.
“Junie,” I rasped against her lips. “Show me what love is.”
Broken hearts.
Shattered souls.
Coming together...
As one.
There was no thought, no hesitation, no indecision. She was mine. She’d always been mine. I wasn’t going to let her go.
Not now.
Not ever.
Then.
Now.
Forever.
Coming full circle, I demanded,
“Marry me.”
Chapter 3
“The sun is gone, but I have light.”
-Kurt Cobain
<>Journey<>
Now: Eighteen-years-old
“What?” I scoffed, my mind blown.
“You heard me.”
“No, I don’t think I heard you correctly. Did you just ask me to marry you?”
“Yeah, Junie. Marry me.”
“Are you high?” I spewed without thinking. My emotions and thoughts were running a mile a minute.
What the hell?
He narrowed his dark, entrancing eyes. “No.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Journey,” he stated in a stern, dominating tone. “I asked you to marry me, and that’s all you gotta say? Questionin’ my state of mind?”
“That’s not asking, Cash.” I pulled out of his grasp, needing a second to breathe. Away from him. Where his hands, his presence, his influence weren’t taking ahold of me.
Swiftly, I slipped off his bed to pace around the room. Dragging my hands through my hair, wanting to pull it out. The walls suddenly closed in on me with my heart beating erratically, pounding for a whole different reason.
Has he lost his mind?
“We’ve only been together for less than a week.”
“You’ve known me all your life.”
I peered at him with wide eyes. “Cash, you can’t be serious right now.”
“I ain’t ever been more serious ’bout anythin’ in all my life. Marry me, Junie.”
I stood there staring at him. I couldn’t stop staring at him. He had to have lost his damn mind.
“Are you hearing yourself right now? Because if you were listening, you’d know how crazy you sound.”
“Crazy ’cuz I want to spend the rest of my life wit’ you?”
“Yes! You don’t even know me!”
“We’re back to this shit again?”
“I wasn’t aware we left it.”
“Junie...”
“Don’t Junie me, Cash.” I adamantly shook my head. “We can’t get married.”
“So your answer is no?” He frowned, making my chest ache. “You’re turnin’ me down?”
“You’re not even asking me, Cash. Marry me is not a proposal, it’s a demand. You’re demanding I marry you, and just last night, you were pushing me away and taking off. How do you expect me to say yes to that?”
He deeply sighed, narrowing his gaze at me. It was as if he was searching for answers to questions he couldn’t ask. Trying to find some sort of reaction other than what I questioned.
Was he expecting me to say yes?
I had to get through to him. Make him understand marriage wasn’t the solution to his problems. It was simply an escape.
“Please stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you expect me to say yes. We haven’t even gone on a date. Up until a moment ago, we hadn’t even kissed. There’s been no exchange of I love you, nothing. You need to take a step back and hear what you’re saying because you’re not making any sense.”
He strode over to me until his body was looming over my small frame. Staring into my eyes, he tugged on the ends of my hair.
“That what you want, Junie? You want me to take you on a date? Hold your hand? Buy you dinner? Take you to see a movie? Then what? Huh? We come back to my tour bus and I bury my face in between your legs and make you come for the first time in your life wit’ just my tongue and lips? That what you want, baby?”
I swallowed hard. His talent of going from one extreme to the next was giving me whiplash.
“Junie, I’ll give you whatever you want. You’ll live the life you’ve always wanted to live. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Cash, how do you know you’re capable of giving me the life I want when you don’t even know what that entails?”
“’Cuz, I’ll spend the rest of my life tryin’ to succeed ’til I finally do.”
I smiled. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.” I brought my hand up to brush a strand of hair away from his eyes. “But still ... I can’t marry you now, Cash. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to see where this—us—can go. I care about you. Deeply. You know that. I’m here for you. We’re best friends, remember?”
He grinned, his eyes shining bright against the morning sun. My response seemed to appease him for the time being.