Beyond the Spring Breeze novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: The Ring
Dean took my bicycle and set it in the truck bed.
Then he walked me down to the waterfront bench, the one under the sycamore, and sat with his arm along the back.
It was the bench where he had asked me to marry him.
The water was a flat bright green, and a work boat was chugging past the harbor mouth.
I looked at it and felt my throat close.
For fifty years I had pictured this place when I thought of him.
Now it was just a bench.
"You're angry," Dean said.
"I'm thinking."
"You went behind my back."
"You burned my papers."
He had the grace to look at his knees.
"I know. I know I shouldn't have." He turned and put both hands over mine. "Thea, I'm scared. That's the truth. You've got this whole big future, and I'm just a guy who fixes engines, and I see you going off with all those clean-cut officers and I think I'll lose you."
It was a good speech.
He even let his voice crack on the last word.
Fifty years ago I had folded under a speech very much like it.
Sitting there at eighteen, I understood why.
It was not that I was weak.
It was that he looked at me like I was the only person on earth, and he meant to stay looking until I said what he wanted.
My body knew that look.
My heart gave an old sore flutter and a pang of grief so strong I nearly doubled over.
Because I had loved this boy.
That was the cruel part.
I had loved him with my whole life, and he had only been using me.
"Say something," he said.
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