by Leanne Davis
His hand was on her waist and he squeezed her. “I agree,” he said as he leaned over and brushed his lips across her cheek. His kisses trailed towards her ear. “That’s why, Cami, I want to ask you right now to marry me.”
She blinked rapidly. His words entered her brain but didn’t fully compute. Moments later, his proposal registered. Holding her hand in his, he slipped a freaking ring on her finger. A gorgeous ring with a large diamond on it.
Her mouth dropped open as she stared at her hand, which he cradled in his… Her finger had a ring on it. Tilting her head upwards with her mouth still wide open, Charlie leaned down and pressed his lips on hers. She shut her eyes, turning into his embrace and facing him. Her hands clutched his shoulders tightly. She felt dizzy, as if she could fall and slip away into the water. Or maybe she expected the world to tip her upside-down. Charlie proposed marriage to her? In Germany? In Europe? While on another continent? Was this really her life? Cami Reed, the homebody who never wanted to leave River’s End, was really here now? Realizing her most wished for dream of her life? She felt like she belonged here too. Doing this with Charlie.
Lifting his head up, Charlie’s gaze seemed uncertain. For the first time, Charlie seemed insecure and a little awkward. “Will you please marry me, Cami?”
Her mouth again dropped open. He gently lifted his finger to her chin and pushed it upwards to shut it. “You keep gaping at me. Does that mean you didn’t guess anything like this would happen?”
She shook her head, whipping her hair back and forth.
His smile was crooked. “The resort? Beach? Dress? Dinner? You know… taking a vacation in a foreign country? You never even suspected I’d ask?”
Cami again shook her head to the negative.
“Wh-what is your answer then?”
Swallowing, Cami finally snapped herself out of her reverie and utter shock. She enthusiastically nodded in the affirmative.
“Yes?” he said to her response. She kept nodding as tears filled her eyes and fell down her face. She couldn’t find the words to express herself. There were no words. No English words anyway, and if she’d known German, she was sure they couldn’t describe how she felt either.
Charlie started to slowly smile, and his eyes glimmered with love and hope as he gripped her hands in his. “Cami? Are you going to speak?”
A million questions flashed across her mind. How? When? Where? But most of all: why? Why did he want to marry her? Was he sure about it? Shaking her head no, she launched herself against his chest and he caught her. Sweeping her feet off the deck of the pier, Charlie lifted her up and she cried and laughed. He joined her laughter as she kept her arms tightly wrapped around him while kissing her over and over.
Nothing else in the world mattered at that moment. How they got here and where they’d go from here didn’t matter. The betrayals and past hurts, her childhood and his, none of it mattered at all. Her former desire to remain the same and live in the small town of River’s End suddenly faded into the background. She finally understood Charlie’s need to seek something different and bigger than himself and River’s End. In that continuum of time, and for just a moment, everything stopped except… them. Now, only their love and relationship mattered. She was finally able to let it be. Cami had never lived in the present moment like this. At last, she could let something just be all that it was. She could experience it and feel it. And she could love and treasure it. It was something to believe in.
Charlie pried his lips and tongue from her mouth before he dropped her back onto her feet and straightened up.
“I had no idea how you’d react.” His gaze studied her face, as if he were memorizing it for the first time.
“Is that why you seemed so stressed?”
He nodded. “Yes, and because I’m overly tired all the time. It’s really hard to live and work here, Cami. I needed this vacation badly. Not just the break but being with you. Mostly, I needed you.”
He rubbed her hand and touched the ring. “You know, it’s considered normal for the intended to check out the ring after it’s been given.”
Cami nodded and grinned as she brought her hand up to the light. It was a square diamond in a platinum band. “How could you…?”
“Manage to live without you all this time? I don’t know, now that you’re here,” he replied in a heavy tone as his gaze stared at her harder.
“I was going to say, afford such a big, elegant ring? Thank you, Charlie. But the issue has always been distance for us.”
He sighed as he swung around to sit on a wooden bench near them. She moved closer and sat down too. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “It hasn’t been the same for me this time. I don’t want us to ever be apart. I want…” He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “I want you to stay here in Germany with me, only until I’m done. We could explore all of Hamburg and East Germany, then go down to Bavaria and Berlin. You could see all the things you’d ever want to see and we could do it together.”
Her mouth fell open and she exclaimed, “Charlie. You can’t be serious.”
He turned towards her and took her hands in his. “I am. Deadly serious. Everyone else already knows about it. My dad and your dad. I already asked for their opinions and advice and my dad loaned me the money to buy your ring.”
“You planned all of this?”
“Of course, I planned it. For half a year, at least. Since Christmas.”
“But you have another year to remain here.”
“Yes, I do. Another year I can’t stand to live without you. I don’t want to simply survive, Cami. I want to live it. It isn’t like when I was in college, it’s too long between visits. I’m afraid I can’t do it again. I can’t be apart from you. Not anymore.”
“We can’t get married just because you’re afraid to be alone for a year.”
“I don’t mean that,” he said calmly. “I want to get married now because I love you and we are both old enough and mature enough now. I want to live with you and see you every day of my life. Don’t say no yet. Think about it. A year. It’s just a year. You and I could explore all kinds of other countries in Europe, and it’d be like traveling to Idaho or Oregon except we’d be in France or Spain. Think of it. I have to work, I know, but it will be worth it as long as we’re together. They already offered me a paid position starting this fall…”
Standing up, Cami braced herself on the railing, needing more air and space. She was overwhelmed and rather shocked at Charlie’s plan. It sounded more like a scheme she might have concocted in order to get Charlie to marry her… not Charlie doing it to her.
“I have so much responsibility now. Not only at the Shield Shelter but also the camp I helped formulate. I can’t just stay here in Germany. I’ll lose everything I worked so hard to build and… I loved it, Charlie. I found something that totally improved my life, something besides you and us. I am helping people. The ability to do that healed something inside me, and it made me better. I finally saw how right you were, after all these years. We were too young to have a baby.”
Charlie stepped closer to her. “I want all those things too with you. Just later on. First, I want to marry you and embark on a journey together to explore the entire world. I want to see places that no one we know ever saw, and no one we know could imagine doing either. It’s just for a year, Cami. And then we can go where ever we want. We can go home or somewhere else. Maybe FINA will put me on at their Seattle office, the one they are currently setting up. If I stay with them, I could make a lot of money, Cami. I have the bilingual skills and two degrees they require. I’ve already caught a few good errors that have been noticed.”
Cami smiled up at him. “Are you saying they know how wonderful and smart Charlie Rydell of River’s End is?”
He stared down at her, his head shaking. “You’re the only one I ever care about. If you see me as anything special, you have to realize this: you are what makes me feel and be wonderful.”
“I don’t w
ant you to take care of me anymore.”
“I don’t want to take care of you. I do, however, want to be with you.”
“I have too many other things to do. I have a job.”
“It’s only a year, Cami, not forever.”
“You told me to find something that didn’t involve you. Now you want me to move to a foreign country where I can’t speak the language and have no job. You’re asking me to be as reliant on you as a baby would be.”
“I simply want you to live in a foreign country with me for one year and yes, it will require learning some language skills. But think of all the things you could do and read about and explore during the day. I doubt very much you’d ever get bored. Dad said Kianna suggested you could work on your plans for the camp from here… and if you choose to make it an annual thing, you’ll be back there after this.”
“Wait… after this? Are you saying I won’t go home now?”
“You can go home if you want to. You can do whatever you choose. I just asked my dad and your parents for their honest opinions. Dad consulted with Kianna because he knew her. He also knew how seriously you take your responsibilities and commitments. So it’s up to you now; you can do whatever you want or need to do.”
“You’ve never needed me so much before.”
“I’ve always needed you. But we weren’t at the same place in our lives. Now, we’re ready to be together all the time. For good,” he said quietly. “And I think you assumed I had no problem handling our separations, but this one is the worst.”
“What then?”
“What then… what?”
“What happens after you finish your final degree?”
“We decide what to do. FINA will probably offer me a full-time job, barring something stupid that I would do. They have branches all over the world, you know, so we might even be offered the chance to go live someplace else… or not.”
“Or not? You mean that’s now an option with you? Would you go home?”
He stepped closer. “I’ll go wherever we decide. Not about what I decide anymore. I just had to prove to myself that I could leave River’s End and make it on my own. Now I don’t need to prove anything, I’ve done it, and I’d just like to live happily. With you. Or whatever version of that you prefer.” He pressed his lips together. “I understand it if you think all this is happening too soon. We don’t have to change anything yet, believe me. But if you like being here, maybe we could finally have a real adventure together. Maybe we could spend some time traveling the world… together.”
“The world? Like…”
“FINA branches are all over the place: in Amsterdam, Sydney, London, New York, Paris. I mean, there would be plenty of choices for us.”
“You want me to live in another country across the world and away from my parents, with you?”
“I just want to live with you wherever it winds up being. I would like to live in a few places, yes. Just you and me, like we’ve been on this vacation. I would love to spend a few years like this. And when we’re closer to age thirty, I’d like to start a family with you. Perhaps the best place for us to do that would be back at home.”
“I—I usually have some idea of where you are on things. But this? I am totally flummoxed. Unsure how to even react. Much less, to decide what I want. I mean, I found a wonderful job. Now you want me to go back to being unemployed?”
“If we go somewhere that is predominantly English speaking, and a lot of people in Hamburg speak English, by the way, you could probably find a job, if you wanted to.”
“But living in Hamburg. For a whole year?”
“For a year. Actually, not even a full year.”
“Let’s say that I decided tonight to stay here with you, what then? Tell me your best-case fantasy.”
He gripped her hands in his. “We’d stay here before going home to Hamburg. We’d start living and exploring there, spending all of my time off together. Then, assuming I successfully graduate with my master’s, we return to River’s End and get married. If that’s where you want to be married, of course. Then we see what our options are and decide together from there.”
“That’s a lot of uncertainty.”
“That’s why I want to do it now. Before we have any kids. Before we settle in to raise a family. I fully intend to do that too, someday. But first, I’d like to experience life. I don’t have any plan of where I want to travel next and what country I want to see, but I’d like to live outside the box for just a little while. Mostly, Cami, I want to do it with you.”
“And if I can’t?”
He nodded, and a gentle smile tugged his lips. “Then I suffer another year here alone, and when I finish up, I come home.”
“To Seattle?”
“Seattle, River’s End, wherever you are.”
“You’d come back to River’s End?”
“I would.”
“And hate it?”
“No. I’d find a way to make it work. Maybe commuting or doing whatever. Look, I have no intention of yanking you away from a job you enjoy doing. But our circumstances are offering both of us this chance, one that I can’t imagine ever having again. And naturally, I’d like to share it with you.”
“But your real goal is to become some kind of international real estate buyer? Doing things I don’t understand in foreign languages I can’t understand?”
“Well, there’s only one language you can’t understand.” He dropped his head down almost as if he were ashamed. “I’m pretty good at it, Cami. I like working with numbers and wheeling and dealing, yeah, I do like it.”
“Just my luck to fall in love with the small-town boy who never had any small-town dreams or aspirations, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “No. You didn’t. I was never the small-town boy, not even as a teen. Maybe a guy like that would have been better for you. Someone like Ben. You could be happy too, living like them now, neighbors with all our parents and right there at home with everyone. But I’ve never wanted that, not even a little bit. I want… this.” He flapped his arm around as if to encompass the whole world. “The thing is: I want it with you. And only with you.”
She closed her eyes. “I realize that. But what you describe is nothing I’ve ever dreamed about. So you have to let me think about it. I hate to ruin this moment. It’s so magnificent. But I do need to think seriously about it.”
“You can think about it for a year. Really. I just wanted you to know the offer was out there for you. Your choice. I wanted this to be special. Something much better than going up in the hills above the ranch or bending down on one knee alongside the river. And Cami, I do want to marry you, regardless of where and what we decide to do.”
She smiled softly. “I will marry you, Charlie. And you made this moment magnificent.” She wrapped her arms around him and he swung her off her feet in a slow circle. She laughed until their lips found each other, and they both smiled and kissed each other, right there in the middle of freaking Europe. No matter what happened, Cami could never forget how romantic it was. She’d also never make the mistake of thinking that anything about them was ordinary or small. Not when it came to Charlie. Or their relationship and perhaps more binding than anything else, their future.
****
Charlie waited years for both of them to be ready for what he knew Cami wanted out of their relationship. Stability, togetherness, and living together. Her former desire to get married and have a baby was a meager attempt to somehow make up for her ill-spent youth. She never had any of the luxuries that Charlie had. He knew that. He blamed himself for making her live in a way that was hard and scary for her, lasting for years, never realizing how much of a hardship it was for her.
Now, so close to finally merging their lives together in an adult and very real union, Charlie sought a way that allowed both of them to live however they wanted.
He understood why she might not choose to be with him or do what he wanted, but he still hoped to make it happen someday.
&nb
sp; They left the pier, holding hands, grinning like little kids and stopping every so often to kiss and hug and smooch. When they finally reached their villa, they fell onto the bed, and Cami quickly began stripping Charlie and he undressed her while laughing, teasing, and enjoying the erotic fun of true love. When their bodies eventually joined, it was more fulfilling and hot than ever before.
Later into the night, they dozed off until Cami suddenly shook him. “Charlie?” she whispered.
“Yeah?” he mumbled. His voice was right in her ear as she wrapped up in his arms and cuddled closer.
She flopped over, turning flat on her back and turned her face up towards his. “Yes.”
He was half asleep and he blinked his eyes a few times to wake up. “Yes? Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’ll move to Europe with you and we can both explore it for several years. Yes, I’ll go home and marry you too. Yes, I’ll someday raise my kids with you, in whatever place we decide to live. I’m just saying yes. To all of it. Yes to spending our lives together from now on. Yes to sharing adventures and becoming different and unordinary. Yes to being adults, that are still free enough to enjoy this. Yes. Yes. To living our lives together. Yes, I’m agreeing to it all.”
Charlie’s breath remained in his lungs. Shaking his head as if to ward off a misty fog, he asked Cami, “Are you sure? What happened? What changed your mind? I thought you said you had to think about it?”
“I have thought about it. I need to go home though and make sure I have the Shield Shelter Horse Camp administration duties passed along. I need to help Kianna find someone who can cover me at the Everett Shield Shelter and I want to say goodbye to Sammy most of all, but to all the other kids who worked with me at the other camp. I want to go back there to work, if we decide to return to the area. And in the meantime, I have a good idea of someone who could take my place as camp coordinator.”