Suddenly she covered her mouth with both hands and looked up at him. “Really? This is for real? They didn’t give me the wrong plate?”
Connor smiled as he shook his head. When he stretched out his hand, she took it once again and he felt a slight tremble in her grasp. “I know some people might say it’s too soon, but in my heart I know that you’re the one. I want to live the rest of my life with you by my side.” Connor took a quick breath and released her hand for a moment to pull the ring from the box as he slipped to one knee beside her. Once he’d taken her hand again, he held the ring out. “Adrianne, would you do me the honor of being my wife?”
Adrianne’s response was a mixture of tears and laughter and frantic nodding. “Oh yes.”
Connor slid the ring on his finger then got to his feet, pulling her up with him so that he could wrap his arms around her. Her arms went around him, clutching as his shirt as she always did. He loved it when she gripped his shirt that way. It was almost as if she was making sure he didn’t get away. Of course, there was no thought on Connor’s part to escaping. For the first time in his life, he was completely at peace with all areas of his life.
“I hope you’re okay with a relatively short engagement. I feel like I’ve already waited forever to join my life with yours.”
Adrianne pulled back and smiled at him, her blue eyes damp behind her glasses. “I am very okay with that. I don’t need the big flashy wedding like I once thought I did. As long as you and the minister are there, I’m good to go.”
Though he wished that they’d never had to go through that horrible time in their teens, it made having her back in his life—and arms—all the sweeter. He was thankful that God had allowed their paths to cross and bring them to this point in their lives. God had taken something terrible and from the ashes of that, He had brought them something beautiful.
The End
Dear Reader ~ Thank you so very much for taking the time to read Beauty from Ashes. As I wrote the story over the past few months, I realized that it would be well received by some and likely not so well by others.
Over the years as I’ve dealt with my own personal issues, I’ve learned that I’m not someone who easily gets over things that have happened to me. As I got to know Adrianne as a character, I realized that that was going to be a trait we shared. When her story unfolded for me and I found out that she had a traumatic event from her high school years that she’d never dealt with, I knew this was going to be something that was hard for her to work through when faced with Connor so many years later. And she would come to realize how much the event and her inability to just get over it had impacted her life over the years.
In choosing this path for Adrianne, I knew that there would be readers who wouldn’t understand her mindset and her inability to just “get over” what had happened to her. The reality is that there are many of us who aren’t able to move on so easily—even from events that others might view as little things. If all of us were able to deal with these situations with such ease, there would be less need for counselors and psychologists.
So if Adrianne’s actions don’t make sense to you, I hope that her story will—at the very least—give you some insight into how people who can’t just “get over” events in their life struggle to work through them. We think about those events frequently. We mull them over often. And eventually—sometimes with the help of counselors—we’re able to deal with what happened, the fallout from it and move on.
I do want to also say that the one thing that will never work for us is for someone to tell us to “get over it” because in doing so, our pain and emotions are minimized and dismissed. I hope that we can all be understanding and offer support in love regardless of how we deal with the struggles in our lives.
Thank you again for taking some time out of your day to spend it with my characters. I hope you’ll stick around for Marcus’s story when it comes out the end of 2016. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter so you’ll hear as soon as it’s available.
Much love ~ Kimberly Rae
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Beauty from Ashes: A Christian Romance (BlackThorpe Security Book 5) Page 26