Mr. Pruitt pulled Brooklyn’s ring out of his pocket. “She would have wanted you to have this back.” He held it out to me.
If Brooklyn was alive she wouldn’t have taken it off. She’d promised me forever. She’d promised. I didn’t want the ring back. I just wanted her.
He grabbed my hand and pressed the ring into my palm. “I’m sorry. I’ll be in touch with the funeral arrangements. I know she would have loved for you to give a speech.” Mr. Pruitt snapped his fingers and one of the bodyguards wheeled him away.
I looked down at the ring in my hand and it became blurry through my tears. “This isn’t real. She can’t be dead. She can’t be.”
I wanted to run around the house looking for her. I wanted to see her laughing at one of my jokes. Or even crying because I was being an idiot. I just wanted to see her face. I needed to see her face.
Mason hugged me.
This isn’t real. I closed my eyes and opened them again. But I was still standing in the middle of the Pruitts’ foyer, Brooklyn’s ring digging into my palm.
Brooklyn was gone. And the last thing I’d ever said to her was that she was a liar.
I looked down at the rose petals all over the floor. I wasn’t even aware that I’d dropped the bouquet. What the fuck had I even brought them here for? Flowers couldn’t fix anything. They couldn’t bring her uncle back. And they couldn’t bring Brooklyn back either.
My whole body felt numb.
“It’s going to be okay,” Mason said.
How was anything going to be okay? Brooklyn was dead. And she’d died thinking that I hated her.
Chapter 40
Wednesday
Matt
I was still numb. I’d gone from rage to despair. I’d called the cops on Isabella, convinced that she was somehow behind it. I’d hired a private investigator, thinking maybe Brooklyn was still alive and out there somewhere alone and scared. Hell, I’d even thought I’d seen her in the street. But I’d just scared some random girl half to death when I grabbed her arm. From rage to despair, all the way back to…numb.
I looked over at the coffin. I wanted to climb inside and stop breathing. I wanted to stop feeling this hollowness in my chest. I just wanted my fucking girl back.
Someone in the church cleared their throat.
And I realized I’d just been standing up here saying nothing. “I was supposed to marry Brooklyn next month,” I said into the microphone. The mic made a squealing noise, like it was rejecting the past tense words that didn’t make any fucking sense coming out of my mouth. “And I don’t really know what to say about our ending, when all I was thinking about recently was our beginning.” I swallowed down the lump in my throat.
“I wrote my vows to her a few weeks ago. Before…this.” I looked over at the coffin again. How could she be dead? How was this happening? I took a deep breath and pulled out the folded up piece of paper in my pocket. I stared down at the words that I’d planned to say to her on our wedding day.
“I don’t know anything better to say than how I feel about her.” The words started to blur in front of me, but I knew them by heart anyway. “Brooklyn. When I first met you, you thought you were invisible. But I always saw you. The first thing I loved about you was how your eyes lit up whenever you saw me. Like I was the only one that could make you happy.”
Happy? Fuck. I destroyed her. I wiped the tears out of my eyes. I had to get through this. I had to let her know.
“But you were the one making me happy. You were a breath of fresh air in this city. I was infatuated with you before we ever spoke. And I fell harder for you every single day since you first let me in. And I know that I’ll keep falling harder every day from here.”
I dropped my head. “I know you’re scared of time. But I’m giving you all of mine. Every second. I’ll cherish you, Brooklyn. I’ll keep you safe.” I choked on my words.
“I know that we’re young. But you’ve taught me that the one thing in this life we can’t waste is time.” I shook my head. “Baby, I can’t imagine my life without you. I’d be lost if we weren’t together. I’m only happy when I know that you’re happy too. And it took me being an idiot, but I know for a fact that I’m only really living when we’re together. And I don’t want to go another day without you by my side.”
I took a deep breath. “I promised to be all your firsts. First kiss. First love. First husband.” When I’d written these vows, I could picture her smiling at that. An inside joke that not one damn person would understand but her. And she wasn’t fucking here to laugh with me. “And there are so many more firsts we’ll get to experience together. First child…” my voice cracked. I couldn’t read this part. I couldn’t make myself think about all the firsts that had been ripped away from us. I wiped my face and skipped to the last paragraph.