Wake Me Up (Love Knows No Boundaries) (28 page)

Chapter Thirty

Aiden~

“Do women have this set rule
about makin’ a man wait?” I ask Zac, when Emma is ten minutes late.

“Laurie was only five
minutes late,” he grins at me.

Wyatt comes running up the stairs of the church. “She’s here, bro!”

“Breathe, Aiden. Blue is not a good skin color,” Zac cracks.

I knock him on the arm and start down the stairs, but before I get hal
fway Mom appears with Emma at her side, and I freeze.

IT’S MY NUMBER ONE MOMENT
.

Emma
has her arm hooked through Mom’s. Emma is holding my mom.

She looks at M
om, as if for permission, and Mom leans in, kissing her cheek.

Dammit, I’m gonna cry.

Emma lets go and starts toward me, and only then does she start to look nervous – not with my mom, our mom. Nervous laugher bubbles over her lips when she gets to me, looking way up from the stair below. She takes my breath away with the dress falling soft around her.

“
Hey.”

“Hey
, you,” I whisper back, with a dumbass smile on my face.

I take her hand and I
speed-walk, Emma style, right to the pastor’s office. I want this over with, before she changes her mind on me. Everything goes as planned, until old Pastor Doug decides to ask if anybody has something to say. Emma takes a deep breath, making my heart sputter to a standstill.

I stop breathing.

“I have,” she says, and I wait for it. But she doesn’t tell me to take a hike. She turns to me, and her face shows so much love for me, I can’t swallow past the lump pushing up my throat. She gives me that look, the one only she can. The one that makes me feel invincible.

“Aiden,” she starts, “G
ran once told me that if you give yourself to a person, you give them part of your soul. You’re my soul mate in every way. I’m glad half of my soul is with you.”

Okay, so I’m crying i
n front of my folks and my brothers. I don’t give a damn.

“You have all of my heart,
Emma,” I whisper with the little voice I have left.

Pastor Doug
better wrap this up, fast.

He runs th
rough his lines and we say our ‘I do’s, and then I start praying he remembers what I asked him.

“I give you Aiden and
Emma Holden,” I grin like a dumbass. “Mr. and Mrs. Holden,” he adds anyway, scowling at me. “I have to say it, son. It’s tradition.”

Wyatt bursts
out laughing first, then Emma, and like I said, hers is infectious. We’re all laughing, not even a second into our marriage.

I’m the only one that cried.

~*~

I take her to Oceans Isle
beach for our honeymoon. I’m sentimental. Sue me.

That’s where she gave herself to me. That’s where our honeymoon will be. I have a surprise for her.

We have four and half hours to kill on the road. A comfortable silence settles around us, and I even forget to put the radio on. It’s just us and the road. Emma starts humming a tune that sounds familiar.

I can’t figure
it out immediately, because she’s humming it slower than the actual tune.

“Wake me up,” I finally get it.

“Hmm?”

“You’
re humming the tune from ‘Wake me up’. Just like took me the last ten minutes to remember the name.”

“You remember the song?” she asks
, surprised.

“I
remember everythin’ about you, sweetheart,” I grin. “You played it the Monday you were startin’ at the university.”

“I also told you to wake me up when it’s all over,” she says
, angling her body towards me. “You can wake me up now, I’d like the dream to end like this.”

I
take her hand and kiss her ring finger, because again, it’s the best I can do while driving.

“It’s not a dream,
Emma. There’s no wakin’ you up. It’s only gonna get better.”

She smiles, the smile she’s
been smiling since I asked her to marry me. The one that makes her eyes sparkle. There’s no more poker face Emma.

When we get to the cottage I’m like a kid. I can’t wait to get her inside. I grab the bag from the back
seat with her present in, and I all but drag her to the door.

“Close your eyes for me, just for a few seconds.”

I watch her eyes flutter closed and take a second to look at her, my wife.

The present,
I better get them up. Mom had them done for me while we were packing. “Aiden,” she whines from the front door when I take too long, but they have to be right.

I laugh and rush back to her.

“Okay, open them,” I say, taking her hand.

“What did you do?”

I just grin, because she stops a few steps in, and she reaches out to the first picture of us standing outside our parents’ house. She has that look of awe as she looks at the photos, our wedding photos.

“You’re part of a family now,” I whisper. A tear rolls down her cheek
, and I wipe it away as I cup her face. “Hey, you. I love you.”

“Hey,”
she says in a shaky voice, “I love you most.”

~*~

Emma is happy. That makes me happy.

Christmas was an experience, but then, every day is an experience with her.

We’ve had a great summer, and Emma has found her happy zone, volunteering at a home for the elderly three times a week. It keeps her busy for now. 

I no longer have a top five list of memories, which is a good thing.

I go looking for Emma, and I find her outside, looking up, at the migrating Monarchs. They migrate up North every year, and sometimes they pass by. But this year there seem to be seems to be hundreds of them – a perfect, colorful cloud.

“Gran, I miss you too.
” I hear her whisper, and I don’t move a muscle. “Thank you for watching over me.”

My
Emma is standing in a cloud of butterflies, and she finally gets her goodbye.

“It’s never goodb
ye, Gran. I know you’re up there, and I’ll keep working to make you proud. I love you,” she says. As sad as her words are, I really believe her gran can hear her.

I
wrap my arms around her, and she leans back into me.

“Hey, wife of
mine. They sure are pretty,” I whisper so I won’t disturb the beautiful moment.

She turns in my arms. “
I love you, Aiden.”

I savor the words. She doesn’t say them a lot
, but when she does it means everything to me. Life with Emma is a dream and I don’t ever want to wake up.

~*~

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This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

~*~

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~*~