Finding Mr. Happily Ever After_Nathan
Page 8
“Our anniversary is coming up. You went on and on about how the bride and groom were like us. You asked the DJ to play our song,” she cried, turning away from him, because looking at Nathan hurt too much. “It’s been two years, Nathan. Two years! How long do I have to wait for you to make up your mind about us?”
“Jazz, stop this.” His voice quavered as if his emotions couldn’t be contained. “I love you. You know I do.”
“But do you want to marry me?” The words burst from her like water from a crumbling dam. She knew she’d built tonight up based on her dreams, but she needed to know if Nathan shared the same one.
He wrapped her in a hug, and she was so broken she let him. Pulling back to look at her, he wiped her tears away with the pads of his thumbs as he held her face.
“I love you, Jasmine Michaels. Only you.”
All he’d needed to say was yes. His unwillingness to voice the word was his answer. She swallowed around the lump in throat. “But you don’t want to marry me.”
He sighed. “It’s not personal. I don’t want to marry anybody.”
“How could it not be personal?” The words came out shrill, but her emotions were unraveling. The future she’d imagined didn’t match his. “I’m your girlfriend. We’ve known each other since we were little kids, and you’ve never mentioned how you feel about marriage? What? Did you just think it would never come up?”
“I thought you know how I felt. My parents…”
Her sadness gained strength, turning to rage. Nathan had knowingly stolen the most important things from her—the years, her dreams, her poor, broken heart. She broke out of his arms and yelled, “Who gives a flying flip about your parents? They’re not us, Nathan. What we have is real. Or at least I thought it was.”
“Jazz, don’t do this.”
“I don’t need to. You already have.”
Without looking back, she returned to the reception hall for her purse. At least now she knew that she’d be pursuing her dreams alone.
Nineteen
Jazz yanked the comforter over her head, refusing to get out of bed and answer the door. She put in earbuds so she wouldn’t have to listen to Nathan’s pleas for forgiveness at eight in the morning for the tenth day in a row.
Ten days.
Ten long, impossible days since she’d left the wedding reception and him.
The worst part was seeing him every day and in every place. Nowhere felt safe. Nowhere felt like it belonged to her and her alone.
If finals hadn’t been around the corner, she’d have taken a bus up to Burton and spent a few days with Bethany to get farther away from Nathan, but Jazz couldn’t escape the memories. Those would haunt her for a long time, as would the future that would never be.
All she wanted was to find peace, but Nathan wouldn’t give her that.
Her mom had worked so hard, fought so hard, to keep their house—and now that same house had turned into a prison.
She felt like a convict trying to escape whenever she snuck through the backdoor, hoping to escape Nathan’s notice.
But he’d made a full-time job of staking her out, of waiting for her to come around.
But come around for what?
He refused to get married, and she refused to be strung along without a commitment. That was it. End of story.
End of them.
She listened to the new Taylor Swift album before taking out her earbuds and trying to discern whether the ghost of relationships past was still haunting her doorway.
When she didn’t hear anything, she glanced out her window toward Nathan’s room. Old habits die hard. She still looked into his window several times a day, still wondered how he would react to the little things happening during her day, still thought of him constantly.
It wasn’t fair.
This time, however, Nathan wasn’t sitting at his desk or lounging in his favorite beanbag chair. Instead, a giant piece of turquoise paperboard blocked his window from view. A giant swatch of hastily scratched marker formed a single word.
Or rather, hashtag.
#N8nJZ4e
Cute. Irritating. Uniquely Nathan.
He was the first to jump on the bandwagon for any and all new social media sites. Jazz, on the other hand, didn’t want perfect strangers giving the thumbs up to her personal photos, so she rarely logged in to check her Facebook account.
She should update her relationship status, though. Would she pick single or it’s complicated? Was she single now, or would one of them cave so the two of them could make up and move on?
Jazz refused to change her views on marriage. Just because things hadn’t worked for her parents and they weren’t working for Nathan’s parents didn’t mean marriage couldn’t work for anyone.
Especially them.
#N8nJZ4e
Darn it. Now she had to check. Hashtags were Twitter, right?
She grabbed her laptop and navigated to Nathan’s Twitter account. She didn’t have one of her own, but his posts were public. And the last several dozen—maybe even a few hundred—of them were tagged with #N8nJZ4e.
She scrolled the feed until she found the tweet marked number one.
@N8photag: [1/1000] They say a picture’s worth 1,000 words. Could 1,000 tweets be worth something more? #N8nJZ4e
Oh, boy. Had he really tweeted about their breakup one thousand times? If so, why? She shuddered at the thought of all those strangers knowing her private business. Nathan loved the spectacle, while she had been more introverted. Yet another way they were completely and irreconcilably different.
Why hadn’t she seen it before?
She sighed and began reading the tweets tagged #N8nJZ4e.
@ N8photag: [2/1000] When I was 6, I met the most incredible girl. At 18, we fell in love. #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [3/1000] At 21, I ruined everything by being an idiot. I hate that I made her cry. #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [4/1000] So today I’m going to tell you a story about that girl who changed my whole world #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [5/1000] Only she can decide if we can have a happily ever after #N8nJZ4e
Jazz rolled her eyes, which had already begun to wet with tears. Leave it to Nathan to put her on the spot, but also leave it to Nathan to break her heart and then follow up with the perfect plan to piece it back together again.
@ N8photag: [6/1000] I won’t embarrass her by giving too many personal details, so for the purposes of our story, let’s just call her JZ #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [7/1000] JZ has the prettiest face and the biggest heart of anyone I have ever known #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [8/1000] She’s crazy smart too #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [9/1000] I still don’t know why she chose me, but I’m so thankful she did #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [10/1000] But you see, tweeps. I messed up, and I messed up bad #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [11/1000] And I’d give anything to take away her pain and bring back her smile #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [12/1000] Because when she smiles, the whole world becomes a better place #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [13/1000] I wanted to share my most perfect memory of JZ so she would see how much I miss her and maybe forgive me #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [14/1000] But all my memories of her are perfect. It’s impossible to choose just one favorite #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [15/1000] Luckily I have 1,000 tweets to tell you about the girl I love #N8nJZ4e
Jazz zipped through the tweets as fast as she could read them. Each was a 140-character love poem written to her. Sure, everyone could see, but only she held the memories of her life—for it had truly been a life—with Nathan.
He recounted details she didn’t know about herself, like how her eyes turned gray when she was feeling sad and she talked from the side of her mouth whenever she told a joke. He shared their moments over the last three years, but also what came in the years before.
He remembered them all and carried them in his heart, just as she had.
When sh
e reached the top of the page, she saw that Nathan was still tweeting rapid-fire. He was going to see this through. One thousand tweets. She clicked refresh and read the latest in his stream.
@N8photag: [443/1000] She gave me her love and showed me my passion. She has given meaning to every single aspect of my life #N8nJZ4e
@ N8photag: [444/1000] She’s my everything. Without her, I’m nothing. I don’t deserve her, but I can’t live without her #N8nJZ4e
She swiped at her tears, wondering how much more Nathan would say. She loved reading the kind words about her, but she also wanted—no, needed—to get to him. He had extended her an olive branch. She needed to grab it tight and never let go, never let go of them again.
Even though she wore a ratty old pair of pajamas riddled with holes and her hair was an impossible mess of tangles and frizz, she ran straight down the stairs, out her door, and over to the house next door.
She ran straight to Nathan.
Just as she always had.
And she never ever wanted to stop running toward him again.
Twenty
Jazz pushed through Nathan’s front door, startling his mom as she burst into the foyer.
“Saw the tweet-tweets, did you?” she asked with a satisfied smile.
Jazz nodded, unable to find any words that Nathan hadn’t written.
“Thank you for giving him another chance. He’s miserable without you.”
Jazz nodded again. She didn’t like hearing things had been hard for Nathan, but she loved knowing how much he needed her in his world. The same as her.
His mother chuckled. “Well, I won’t keep you any longer, dear. Go on. He’s in his room.”
Jazz walked up the same stairs she’d climbed so many times before, toward the bedroom that had been her home away from home, and to the person who she couldn’t picture her life without.
When she opened the door to Nathan’s room, she found him kneeling on bended knee, holding up a velvet box and regarding her with tears in his beautiful, brown eyes.
Oh my gosh. So much had changed in such a short time. Including his mind when it came to marriage, apparently. Happy tears swelled in her eyes, and she did nothing to fight them off. They’d been through the ringer—they’d been through life—together, and now they had both earned this moment. This happily ever after.
“Nathan,” she whispered, hoping that one single word held everything for him as it did for her. Nathan. Her world in two short syllables. Her happiness in one single man.
He opened the box to reveal a stunning turquoise stone set in silver. It wasn’t a flashy diamond or a priceless jewel, but the ring was the closest thing to Jazz herself in jewelry form. Nathan knew her inside out, her likes, her dislikes, her heart. He knew all of her, yet he still wanted to love her, wanted her by his side, and was willing to do anything to win her back.
He took the ring out of the box and placed it on her finger. A perfect fit.
She thought back to that first day when she had spied him through the window. Had her five-year-old heart somehow known that it had found its forever home even then?
“Jasmine Michaels,” the twenty-one year old version of that same boy said now. “I still don’t know how I feel about marriage, but I know how I feel about us. How I’ve always felt. I have a lot of work to do on myself, but I promise you I’m going to work hard to be the partner you deserve. When we’re both ready, would it be okay if I asked you to marry me?”
Not a proposal, but a promise. He wanted to earn her, but didn’t he know that he already had? That he’d always been her everything? She tried to make sense of his proposal. So simple, yet so hard to understand. Just like Nathan had been to her all throughout their teenage years as she bore the weight of her secret feelings in hiding.
“I love you so much, Nathan, but I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”
They both laughed softly.
He kissed each of her fingers, letting his lips linger longest on the one that connected straight to her heart, the one that now wore his ring. Their ring. “I love you, Jazz, and I want to get pre-engaged.”
“Like engaged to be engaged?”
She expected him to stand then, but instead, he pulled her down to kneel with him. Now they were both vulnerable, on equal footing, together.
“Exactly. I have some things to work out about my feelings toward marriage, but I am going to get there. We’re going to get there together. Then we’re going to have the most beautiful wedding anyone has ever seen, and we’re going to live that life of freedom, love, and passion together. We’re going to travel the world. Together. We’re always going to be Nate and Jazz forever. That is, if you’ll say yes.”
“You forgot the hashtag,” she joked, wondering if she was speaking from the side of her mouth as Nathan had tweeted. “But, yes, definitely. I’ll be your pre-fiancée. I’ll be whatever you need me to be, Nathan Reed.”
“Jazz, don’t you know that already? All I ever need is you.”
What’s next for our intrepid heroine? You won’t want to miss a single installment of her path to happily ever after! Order your copy of the next book in her journey now…
Love is overrated.
Jazz Michaels learned that the hard way. She isn’t about to get burned by another guy who claims to love her. Attending one of the top MBA programs in the country, she is doing what she wants to do. But when a handsome athlete kisses her at a party, she wants more…even if she’s not looking for romance.
Chase Killion is set on playing professional baseball. With the talent and drive to achieve his goals, he’s on the fast track to stardom at the college level. The last thing Jazz wants is to stand in his way. Chase may call her his good-luck charm, but that can’t possibly last. As Chase’s dreams draw closer, will Jazz be able to fit into his future?
One bride, four possible grooms, unlimited potential for disaster to strike. Is the man waiting at the end of the aisle the one that’s meant to be Jazz’s forever love? Find out in this addictive series of one woman’s journey to her happily ever after. Order your copy, and start your book binge today!
Get Jazz and Chase’s story at www.melstorm.com/hea#2
About the Authors
Melissa Storm is a mother first, and everything else second. Writing is her way of showing her daughter just how beautiful life can be, when you pay attention to the everyday wonders that surround us. So, of course, Melissa's USA Today bestselling fiction is highly personal and often based on true stories. She never misses an episode of The Bachelor, because priorities.
* * *
GET IN TOUCH WITH THIS MELISSA!
* * *
www.MelStorm.com
author@melstorm.com
facebook.com/MeetTheStorms
Melstorm.com/YouTube
* * *
USA Today bestselling author Melissa McClone has written over forty sweet contemporary romance novels and been nominated for Romance Writers of America’s RITA® Award. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, three children, two spoiled Norwegian Elkhounds, and cats who think they rule the house. They do!
* * *
GET IN TOUCH WITH THAT MELISSA!
* * *
www.MelissaMcClone.com
melissa@melissamcclone.com
facebook.com/melissamcclonebooks
@melissamcclone
More from Melissa Storm
Sign up for even more free stories and uplifting messages from Melissa at www.MelStorm.com/gift
The Sled Dog Series
Get ready to fall in love with a special pack of working and retired sled dogs, each of whom change their new owners' lives for the better.
* * *
Let There Be Love
Let There Be Light
Let There Be Life
The First Street Church Romances
Sweet and wholesome small town love stories with the community church at their center make for the perfect feel-good reads!
* * *
Love’s Prayer
Love’s Promise
Love’s Prophet
Love’s Vow
Love’s Trial
Love’s Treasure
Love’s Testament
Love’s Gift
The Church Dogs of Charleston
The Church Dogs of Charleston is a new series about a very special litter of Chihuahua puppies born on Christmas day.
* * *
Little Loves
Mini Miracles
Tiny Treasures
The Cupid’s Bow Series
Everyone deserves to find love that lasts. If you love romance, check out these stories set in the 1950s, 1980s, and today.
* * *
The First Generation
When I Fall in Love
My Heart Belongs Only to You
I’ll Never Stop Loving You
You Make Me Feel So Young
* * *
The Second Generation
Total Eclipse of the Heart
Tainted Love
I Want to Dance with Somebody
Take My Breath Away