Dust by Eva Everson (epub e reader .TXT) 📕

Miss Justine waited until closer to the wedding, especially seeing as she hadn’t been aware of the date until earlier that day? Why had the house already been rented for a couple who couldn’t move into it for nearly two months?

“Well,” Westley said, clearing his throat in discomfort. “You see, I’ll be moving over there right before Thanksgiving and—”

“What?” I asked, turning my whole body to look at him. “You didn’t—you didn’t tell me this.”

“Ali,” he said, his voice now low, a hint of warning in the shortened version of my name.

A tone I’d never heard before, but instantly understood. “We’ll talk about this later,” he said.

“We’ll talk about it now,” I said, more aware than ever that my parents sat mere feet from us. “Westley?”

His hand cupped my elbow, then squeezed as he brought me up to stand with him, the pressure nothing like the reassurance I’d felt earlier at Miss Justine’s. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to Allison about this,” he said as an apology to my parents, one that probably seemed pretty ridiculous given that we’d just spent an entire four hours in the car together. “Will you excuse us?”

Westley escorted me—so firmly I wondered if my parents could tell—out the door until we stood next to his car where he leaned against the driver’s door, directing me until I stood in front of him. “Now listen,” he said, his tone remaining foreign to me. “Don’t ever embarrass me like that in front of your parents again.”

“Embarrass you? Westley, my parents now know that you just blindsided me. What kind of marriage are we going to have if you’re doing that now? Before we’re even married?”

“Furthermore,” he continued, ignoring my questions. “Miss Justine isn’t going to wait forever.”

“It’s not forever,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper for fear of waking the neighbors. Or worse, alerting my parents that something was more wrong than we let on as we left the inside of the house. “It’s two months.”

“And in two months I can make a lot more money for us, Ali. We’ll be more prepared for our lives together once we’re married, sweetheart.” He rubbed my arms, up and down, lightly. But, for once, the thought of being Westley’s wife didn’t send quivers through me as it usually did. I was too stunned by his sudden revelation to feel too much of anything at all.

“But there’s so much to do and I’ll need you to be here with me.”

“Like what?”

“Like … I don’t know.” I threw my arms out, forcing his hands away from their journey, my own falling dramatically. “Wedding plans.”

“Which you don’t need me for. That’s the bride’s deal. Not the groom’s.”

“What about—I don’t know …”

“Bridal showers?” His brow rose and his eyes twinkled under the light of a streetlamp. Enough to let me know the old Westley—the one I knew and trusted—had returned. No longer angry with me. No longer on the opposing team. “Teas? Or whatever it is you girls do before you meet your groom at the altar?”

I crossed my arms. Looked down at my feet. At the clunky wedge shoes that made walking difficult but had surely improved my calf muscles. Saw his—brushed dark-beige suede—pointing toward mine, so close and yet not close enough. When I looked up again, Westley smiled at me. “Come here,” he said, opening his arms, having returned to the man I loved.

“Westley,” I whispered without moving, knowing that, even though we’d not finished our argument, he’d won it.

His fingers curled in a “come here,” gesture. I dropped my arms, sliding them around his waist, and laid my head against his shoulder, turning my face toward his, inhaling the resilient musk cologne that lingered along his Adam’s apple. “Westley,” I said again, determined to make him understand. “You just can’t go springing things like that on me.”

His lips found my temple and rested there. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I thought you understood.”

“How could I?”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t say.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t like the idea of you not being here. With me. Always.”

“Me either. But it’s just a little while, sweetheart. Not forever. Never forever.”

We remained silent for a few moments, our breath finding rhythm until it became a melody sung in unison. “Ali,” he finally said.

“Wes.”

He chuckled. “I only need you to trust me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be back at least two days a week. Every week. Whatever you need me for, I’m there to help. And we’ll talk every night. Ma Bell is free after nine o’clock.”

“Okay.” I squeezed my arms tighter around him.

“Are you cold?”

“Yes. But there’s not a fire nearby or a chair for you to hold me in.”

He kissed my temple again. “Goodness, woman. You’re really something, you know that?”

I grew warm under the fullness of the compliment. “I may be, but I still don’t want to plan a wedding without you.”

“You won’t have to. Whatever you need me for, I’m here.”

“We have to pick a china pattern. And silver. And crystal and linens.”

“Whatever you want, Mrs. Houser.”

I snuggled closer as a giggle rose from inside of me. “I want to be Mrs. Houser.”

Westley shifted, forcing me to look at him. Truly look at him. To see the softness in his eyes. The care that rested there. The tenderness that laid against his lips like roses on the vine. “I love you,” he mouthed more than said.

My senses nearly caught fire and my knees threatened to buckle. “I love you, too. And we need to go back inside and talk to my parents some more. Let them know we’re okay.”

“Are we? Okay?”

I nodded. “We’re more than okay, Westley. We are.”

Within a week, Westley had moved to Odenville, leaving me to stay busy with work and showers and teas and all the things that, as he’d said, went with planning a wedding. Flowers. Candelabras. Bridesmaids dresses. Every night at 9:01 on the nose, our home phone rang, me practically sitting on top of it. Mama wanting nothing more