Exception (77 page)

Like in a fairy tale,
Sleeping Handsome
, if you will, the moment Emily’s body bounced back up, Taylor’s eyes fluttered open. Drawing in a lungful of air and holding it in her chest, Emily looked down at him as he blinked a few times. She thought he would look around like people do in movies, to see where he was, but he didn’t; his eyes were firmly fixed on hers.

There was silence for the longest time. Suddenly, Taylor spoke in a raspy voice. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Speaking hurt. In fact, everything hurt like hell. However, the only thing Taylor cared about was the angel bathed in warm light, looking down at him.

“Ditto.” Her eyes glistened with tears.

A tiny smile curved Taylor’s lips, shooting a new wave of pain through his face. He tried to raise a hand to touch her face, but it felt like it weighed a ton. “Hey, no crying. Chuck’s the daisy, not you. Watson girls are tough as nails.”

A low humorless laugh escaped Emily’s lips and she shook her head at him. “I haven’t been much of a Watson girl lately. I’ve been so out of it, weak and an idiot. Zombieland got me good, without you here.”

“Oh babe, I’m so sorry . . . ” he began, but she cut him off with another kiss to his lips. She couldn’t take that sad look in his eyes. On a normal day that would have been awful, but seeing it right after he’d woken up from a coma was too much.

“What are you apologizing for?” she asked lovingly. “None of this was your fault, and I was like that because I couldn’t imagine living without you.” New tears formed in her eyes. They spilled over his skin as she leaned down to kiss his lips again. “There’s so much I have to tell you. So much I’ve been dying to say that I thought I’d never get to. That’s why I’m crying now, Tay. These are happy tears.

“That day at East Rock, you told me that meeting me made the world spin again, and it’s the same for me. And I’m ready now. I’m ready to let go of the past and enjoy the family I was meant to have. The love I’ve always dreamt about. I’m ready to belong to you, body, soul and whatever else is in me, because I already do . . . ”

Emily looked at him. So much emotion was coursing through her body that she felt light-headed. It was the best and most incredible feeling she’d ever experienced in her life. A beaming smile crept slowly over her face. “My answer to your question,” she paused and drew in a deep breath, “is ye—”

“Shhhh,” Taylor silenced her with a light clamping of her lips between his index finger and thumb.

His heart raced at nearly hearing that simple, yet deeply meaningful, word, making the monitor spike and surely alerting the medical staff. As much as he wanted her to finish it, and he wanted it badly, the desire to give her the beautiful proposal she deserved, where she could say those words for the first time, was stronger. He was driven by the need to separate that word from the sad memories of the current moment. So he would wait, even it meant prolonging his own burning desire to finally hear that three-letter word.

Confusion crossed over Emily’s face, marking her forehead with the tiny worry lines he hated so much. As he let go of her lips, he smoothed the small crease between her brows and smiled a sweet, crooked smile. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to hold that word close to your heart. There’s nothing more important to me than that answer, but I want it to follow the proposal you deserve.” His crooked smile turned into the wicked one she loved. “And I want to celebrate it. A lot.”

Emily gazed back at Taylor, giggling. She lifted her hand to grab the air in front of her mouth. Keeping her eyes locked with his and her fist pressed tightly against her lips, she whispered the word in between her clenched fingers, her voice so low he couldn’t hear. With a wide smile on her lips, she kissed the closed fist and brought those invisible letters to her chest, over her heart, and pressed her palm down.

Both shared knowing smiles as the doctor, the nurse and Taylor’s parents walked into the room. Without another word, Emily winked at him and kissed his nose before walking to the foot of the bed.

N
EARLY TWO
months after Taylor’s accident, Emily finished her last study group in the familiar, stuffy study room in the library. Nostalgia was in the old book smell filling the air, in the questions the students asked, and especially in the tiredness she felt, and the uncontrollable desire for a large cup of coffee to stir her insides. She had to admit that, this year, those feelings had little to do with her anni-friend-sary with Zack and Jody, and everything to do with waking up bright and early to enjoy the sexual talents of her boyfriend.

She snickered as she packed her belongings in her purse, remembering how emphatically Taylor had proved that his injuries were all healed and that the doctors had done right by finally clearing him to live his life normally. Putting an end to their sex starvation was only one of the reasons they were grateful that those awful days were now officially just faint memories, validated only by the two scars marking his body.

In addition to Taylor’s physical recovery, those two months were marked by a complete reformulation of the young couple’s life, something that had both almost giddy with childlike glee.

Being extremely pleased with the way Carla handled the duties of curator in the NYC gallery during his absence, and confident that Kimberly was too scared of Nate’s curtness to mess things up, Taylor wasted no time in packing his personal belongings and leaving the city he loved behind. Emily insisted on keeping the apartment as a weekend getaway, in case he found himself missing the hype of the city, but he never did. And, if you asked him, he would guarantee that moving to New Haven, or New Heaven, as he’d started calling the city the moment they returned from Maine after his accident, was the second-best decision he’d made in his life. The first was, without a doubt, buying that undrinkable cup of coffee.

Without a workplace to go to, Taylor divided his time between overlooking the renovations being done to the warehouse where the Hartford gallery would be, and the renovations being done to the single story brick house he’d purchased his first week in New Heaven.

Emily had fallen in love with the house one day on her way back from Hardfort. She’d talked insistently and passionately about it. After one look, he was convinced, too. The place was even more perfect than she had described.

It was huge, with gorgeous flooring, wide windows that brought in lots of natural light, four suites, wide-open rooms that almost begged for children, and a dream of a kitchen. The backyard was extensive with a pool, a rose garden by the fence, and even a wooden playhouse nesting amongst the trees. It had everything they’d always dreamt of and, from the second they first stepped foot inside, they knew that the house was their home.

Emily often reflected upon the happiness she had now. She felt like she was living someone else’s life and, for fleeting moments, she envied herself for the surreal amount of love she experienced. The magical night she had just shared with Taylor brought those thoughts to her mind today. It also brought the dream that usually followed those wonderfully bizarre thoughts.

On a glorious afternoon, when the sun tinged the sky pink and perfumed the air with the smell of summer, Emily enjoyed a long walk on a fluffy sandy beach alongside Taylor, a grown up Lewis, and a younger version of Nana, who was surrounded by a swarm of gorgeous half-naked men, catering to the woman’s every desire. She’d had the dream countless times since the day Taylor woke up from his coma, and she always woke up laughing hysterically.

A smile was still on her face at the memory of her dream when she stepped out of the library and made an almost blind path to the coffee cart parked across the lawn. The nostalgic feeling was back, reinforced by the sight of the line forming to sign up for the summertime book club meetings.

“A large, please,” she ordered and, before she could retrieve the money from her pocket, the girl on the other side of the cart was handing her the drink, a wide smile on her lips and a funny gleam in her eyes that traveled comically from the cup to Emily’s face.

The manic expression on the girl’s face made Emily wonder if she should reach for her pepper spray tucked in her messenger bag. However, as soon as she drifted her own eyes to the white paper cup, her lips curled in a smile at the sight of the black scribbled letters.

The smile on Emily’s lips as she read those words rivaled that of the cat tattooed on her ribs and, as a familiar set of boots and the hint of denim peeked from the borders of her blurry line of sight, it seemed to grow even bigger. “It did, because it brought me you, and you did all those things.”

She met his glistening eyes as he took a couple of steps in her direction. He stopped right in between her and the trash bin, where he’d tossed that first cup of coffee. Taking her left hand in his, he brought it to his lips, delivering a soft kiss over her knuckles.

“Standing right here a year ago, you worked some magic in my life. You, with your beauty, your kindness, your contagious laugh and your incredible strength turned the half-broken man I used to be into a hopeful, happy, whole man. You erased my past and my failures and my pain, and replaced them with all the goodness you’re made of. I’m so happy and so grateful to have you, to love you and to get to make a life with you.”

A couple of tears ran from Emily’s eyes, smearing a path over her pink cheek as Taylor kissed her knuckles once more and sunk down to one knee. “I could have asked you this question the first time we drank this god-awful coffee, because I loved you then, and you laughed because you knew.” She laughed at his misquote of Shakespeare.

He continued, with the widest smile she’d ever seen. “But I’m glad I didn’t, because I wouldn’t trade a second of our relationship as friends and as lovers for anything in the world. It
was
and
is
perfect. So Emily, my best friend and love of my whole life, I ask you to help me make the rest of this story perfect as my wife.”

She watched with fascinated eyes as he released her fingers and removed from his pocket the tiny red box that was once the ghost of all the things she thought she would never have. Now, looking at it in that perfect moment, she saw the realization of all her deepest desires and the key to the lifetime of happiness she’d dreamt about for so long.

Locking his eyes to the mesmerizing blue eyes looking down at him, Taylor slowly opened the lid, revealing the ring that had once belonged to his grandmother. “Emily Ann Watson, will you marry me?”

“Yes!” The answer was a mixture of a giggle, a laugh and a sob. It sounded like the most perfect music to Taylor’s ears, and he slipped the ring from its box and on to the finger it belonged to.