I was marching ahead, the most frenzied of all. I was passing angry, righteous faces, stomping feet, and pumping fists. Then, I was at the front of the pack, my “RayGen not again!” the loudest of all, my tread a stomp, my fist a punch.
As we neared the trees, an all-too-familiar black car pulled up in front of them. I froze. No, it couldn’t be. And yet, it was. Even as I stopped, immobile, and the sea of protestors surged past me, still I saw the man who stepped out of that black car.
Carter Ray himself.
He was striding over to the nearest tree. There, amid the shouts and boos, he chained himself to its thick trunk. Putting a megaphone in front of his mouth, he spoke.
“You can stop chanting—we’re on the same side, now.”
There were more jeers and boos as the crowd continued its advance. But Carter wasn’t finished yet.
“I came here to tell everyone that I’m going to be making some changes. Not changes, really, more like a complete overhaul. I came here to tell you that from now on, RayGen won’t be using pipelines at all, because we’re going to be focusing on renewable energy.”
Now the crowd had reached the line of trees, and it had brought me along with it. It was motionless, silent, listening. Because Carter Ray had just gotten started.
“I’m not sure how to explain it, how to explain how wrong I’ve been. All I know is that it has something to do with my dad, my brother, and a woman named Donna. You probably all know my father, Heston Ray. What you don’t know is that his obsession with this company destroyed our family, a fact that I’ve spent most of my life denying. It hurt too much to admit the truth, that he—and I—have made mistakes. But even my brother’s insistent meddling over the years wasn’t enough to make me see how short I’ve fallen of the man I wanted to be.
“No, Donna did that. She’s the kindest, funniest, most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met, and yes, as you can probably guess, I’ve all but ruined things irreparably with her. She saw the best in me when everyone else could only see the worst, and, despite everything, she believed in that; she believed in my innate goodness, time and time again. She showed me the beauty of life when I’d forgotten that beauty existed at all. She made me feel, when I’d all but forgotten how.
“And I guess that I’m doing this, making these changes, because I can’t do it anymore. I can’t go on lying to myself that I’m doing what I want to do, that I’m being the man I want to be. I don’t want to be a man who mortgages our planet’s present with its future, who cuts down and destroys the very trees and habitats that are giving us the air we breathe. I don’t want to be the man who spends every night with a different woman and yet goes home empty and alone.”
Carter cleared his throat and exhaled.
“I want to be a man I can be proud of. Who does right by his family and his community and himself. Who creates a company that makes life better for everyone, not just for the chosen few who get the profits in their pockets. In short, I want to be the man Donna saw in me, the man I hope I can live to be. And, I guess, you could say this is all for her—the only woman I’ve ever loved and ever will love, the woman I can only hope to win back—one desperate, foolhardy attempt like this at a time.”
Silence. Then, the crowd roared its approval. As cheers surrounded me from all sides, I found my feet moving once more. I was advancing through the crowd, toward the man chained to a tree, the man I thought I had known and did know, the man I now knew that I loved. Carter Ray.
When I reached the front of the crowd, our eyes locked immediately. He stared at me like I was a ghost, and I stared at him like he was the love of my life. Because, now, I knew he was.
It was only a few steps before I reached Carter and his tree. Our lips met before the words spilled out, before Carter murmured, “You’re here. You came. You…”
“Feel the same” I finished for him.
Then, as the crowd cheered on and the sky finally broke out into rain, which was really tears of joy, as Carter’s chained hand clasped mine, with one sly smile at my love, I whispered in his ear, “Though, you’ve given me quite the inspiration for tonight.”
Epilogue
Carter
Tonight would decide everything. As we drove up to her parents’ ranch, I kept glancing over at Donna. Each glance, however, revealed the same serene face as last time. I didn’t get it. How could she be so calm at a time like this? Six months on from that fateful protest, didn’t she realize that tonight would decide everything?
Swiftly, I passed car after car in the left lane. I wanted to get to the ranch as fast as possible, to get this over with. I couldn’t stand not knowing.
Another glance at the glistening diamond ring on Donna’s finger provided no relief. Asking Donna to marry me had been easy. The same theme park, the same Ferris wheel, the ring in the same Monet-decorated cookie had done the trick. But now, asking her parents—the same parents I had forced off their ranch—was another matter entirely.
As if reading my harried thoughts, Donna clasped my hand with a small smile. My Donna.
Sure, I had gotten her parents their ranch back, but what if that wasn’t enough? What if they still saw me as Carter Ray, the sociopathic billionaire who had unfairly forced them off their land? I’d only met them a handful of times, probably not enough to totally extinguish their former bad impression of me.
Before I knew it, however, I was pulling up to the wooden building.
“Here we are,” Donna said.
I nodded but said nothing. Something told me that admitting I was really damn close to turning the car around and rocketing both of us off and away was not a good idea. As we walked toward the door, Donna squeezed my hand.
“Don’t worry. My parents like you.”
I squeezed her hand back, but once again said nothing. There was no use in pointing out that her parents liking me enough to be okay with dating their daughter and liking me enough to be okay with marrying their daughter were two entirely different things.
Her mother, Grace, answered the door with a big smile. Over her shoulder, she yelled, “Tom! They’re here!”
Down the stairs came Donna’s dad, a short man with a gray beard who hugged both of us.
“Glad you two stopped by; it’s been too long.”
“It has,” I agreed as they led us into the family room.
Tom and I sat down on the navy couch, the small talk beginning, Donna and Grace flitting in and out as they worked on dinner. By the time dinner was ready and we made our way into the rich green velvet and cherry wood dining room, the lump in my throat had developed into a full-on inability to speak.
It happened when Donna’s mom cheerily asked if there was anything new in my life worth talking about. Then, during a minute of stunned, awkward silence, where I considered whether now was the time to pop the question instead of at the end of the meal like I had originally planned, Donna chimed in.
“Actually, Mom, there’s something Carter and I wanted to ask you.”
And, just like that, before we had even sat down, it was time. There would be no avoiding it any longer.
“Mr. and Mrs. Whitburn, Donna and I want to get married, and we’d like your blessing.”
As their eyes widened in shock, I continued.
“Before you give us your answer, I want to say a few words. I want to tell you how much your daughter has changed my life. How she opened my heart to her and, in doing so, the world. How not a day goes by that I don’t thank God that I met this caring, interesting saint of a woman.”
Donna’s parents had tears in their eyes, although I couldn’t tell which kind they were until, seizing both our hands, Tom spoke.
“You have our blessing,” he said. “Of course you have our blessing! You’ve been so good to our Donna, too. You two are going to be wonderfully happy together.”
He drew all of us into a great big hug, and, at once, everything was all right—better than all right. It was perfect.
DONNA
Th
is couldn’t be happening. I kept closing my eyes, expecting it all to disappear. The gathering crowd outside, the friends and family coming here to celebrate me. Us. Carter Ray and me. The ranch was all decked out like the sketch Carter and I had made: the white roses covering the wooden furniture, the black-clothed tables, the cherry wood arch, everything covered in ribbons of blue.
“Donna, if you keep staring outside instead of getting ready, you’re going to miss your own wedding,” Helen admonished gently.
I turned to her with a smile, throwing myself onto her in a hug.
“Whoa, what’s this about?” Helen said, although there was a note of happiness in her voice.
“For everything. For helping me with the wedding. For being my friend during these whirlwind past eight months.”
And they had been a whirlwind. Once the press had gotten a hold of the story that a penniless civilian—the same civilian who was responsible for RayGen’s complete policy overhaul the past few months—was engaged to Carter Ray, I’d barely been able to step into Denver without being besieged by paparazzi.
Helen had been the one who had convinced me to keep living my life, to keep shopping, going to movies, and just being a regular girl in her 20s, despite the overwhelming attention.
“It’s nothing,” Helen said. “I’m just glad you were so easygoing about Kyle and me, especially when I’d been trying to force you two together.”
I squeezed her hand.
“Of course I’m happy for you guys. It made sense in a weird little way—you trying to deny your feelings by trying to match us up.”
Scrunching her face into a pleased expression of discomfort, Helen thrust my dress at me.
“Great. Enough bonding, though. Time for the dress!”
I let her help me into it. Then, walking to the full-length, gold-framed mirror, I surveyed myself one last time. The dress couldn’t have been more fitting. The sweeping chiffon neckline and lace inserts were perfect for today’s sunshine, even for how I was feeling: light, excited, free.
Helen placing the crown of flowers on my head was the final touch.
“It’s go time, Donna,” she whispered, and I nodded.
“Okay. You go out. I’ll be there in a sec.”
She left, and I peered out the window one more time at the guests. They were all sitting down on the lawn of my family’s ranch, waiting for me.
This was it.
I walked out as the band began to play. First were Helen and Kyle walking down the aisle. Then it was Paul, Carter’s brother, wearing a hilarious light blue suit. On his arm, in an equally incongruous baby blue dress, was his date. Then, it was time for my dad to walk me down the aisle. He walked me to my husband-to-be, my Carter, who looked as dapper and irresistible as ever in his black tuxedo.
As the minister got the ceremony underway, Carter was so transfixed by the sight of me that he took a second to answer each time. When it came time to say his vows, he took a moment to remember himself. Then, clasping both my hands, stepping so close to me so that our whole bodies were pressing together, he spoke.
“Donna, I can’t say that I ever expected this, ever even believed enough in the world to hope for this. To hope for a woman who understands me, challenges me, completes me. And not in a way that I’m less when you’re gone, but in the way that I’m more when you’re around. Donna, you make everything better. That day you added color to my charcoal drawing—that’s when I really saw it, saw just what you mean to me. You are a bettering of everything that I am, the color to my shade. You came to me when I’d forgotten what life was all about, when my mind was imprisoned by figures and bottom lines. I viewed people as a means to an end. I had forgotten the humanness of things, the joy of laughter and fun and being silly, the true vibrancy of life. So, what I want to say to you, Donna, is thank you. Thank you with all my heart. You’ve made me happier than I’ve ever been in my life, and I know that as long as you’re here, I’ll be happy until the day I die.”
I stared into the face of this handsome man, dumbstruck as my entire speech fell away from me. Then, suddenly, I realized it. I didn’t need a speech, because the words were lodged in my heart.
“Carter, I don’t think you realize that you have had an equally profound effect on my life. That, when I met you, I was lost. Never had I felt anything this strong; I was starting to think something was wrong with me. And then I met you—you and your drive-me-crazy self. I still wake up smiling at my incredible luck at having met you. You’re adventurous, funny, sexy, and, most of all, Carter, you are an incredibly good, caring man. Every day you do a thousand little things for me, so many that I even miss some, only realizing them hours later—like how you always pick up those little packets of mustard I love at the grocery store, or how you had that sequin dress you bought me so many months ago fixed without my even asking. If this vow was at all what it should be, it would be me thanking you. So, thank you, Carter. Thank you with all that I am and all that I will grow to be with you. Thank you for every perfect day I have had with you and every perfect day that I will have with you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Then, the minister said, “Carter, do you take Donna to be your wife?”
Carter, his face shining, his lips trembling, said, “I do.”
Now, the minister was smiling, too. Turning to me, he asked, “Donna, do you take Carter to be your husband?”
My “I do” was only a breathless murmur, but already the priest carried on to say, “Carter, you may now kiss the bride.”
Carter pressed his lips to mine. As our lips locked, people started cheering, but it was nothing compared to the singing of my heart, the melody surging through my veins. The joy. A crazy, out-of-this-world ecstasy was overtaking me.
We separated too soon, but now we were surrounded by the beaming faces of our friends and family, of Helen, Kyle, Paul, and my mom and dad. We were all hugging and holding each other, our happiness a common happiness, an outpouring of joy.
Dinner was more of the same: one laughing conversation punctuated by bites of steak and crispy salmon. Paul gave the toast: “To my brother, who’s now the man I always knew he was, and to the woman who made him that man.” The clinking of glasses was music to my ears, Carter’s “I love you” whispered in my ear even more so.
Before we knew it, it was it time for the cake, the five-layered Monet, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec inspired masterpiece. Everyone ate too much, until we had no choice but to hit the dance floor.
As Carter and I whirled around, it occurred to me that the songs were all familiar; I had heard them all before, but where?
Carter, pressing me closer to him, confirmed this. “These were the songs playing when we drove to our different rendezvous spots, before I asked you to be my girlfriend by chaining myself to a tree.”
Chuckling, staring into his eyes—which I had realized a few months ago were actually a deep, rich brown—I suddenly wanted nothing more than to kiss him. So I did, pressing my lips to this man, this perfection, my husband.
And, since we were one now, he read my thoughts and whispered, “Your room?”
As we glided away, someone in the crowd called to me, “Donna, how do you feel now?”
“Perfect!” was all I yelled back as Carter led me inside. The real answer would have been too long. I felt, without a doubt, that today was the first day of the best part of my life.
The End
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