The Wife by S.P. Cervantes

me. I love you because you are simply the most kind, sexy man I have ever known.”
    He smiled and kissed me in a way that he never had before. His breaths were slow, as if he was savoring each sweep of our tongues across each other. He pulled back, placing both hands on my cheeks, and pressed his head against mine. “Sometimes I wonder how someone like you could actually love me.”
    Was he reading my mind?
    He continued with a pained voice, “Sometimes I get scared that I’m going to wake up one morning and this was all a dream.” He placed a lingering kiss on my lips again, letting me feel the soft stubble on his face. He looked at me again, his sparkling green eyes looking into my soul. “You’ve got my heart and soul, Lex. It’s all I’ve got, so be careful with it.” He kissed me softly again. “I just want to be worthy of someone like you. I don’t have much more to offer you other than myself.”
    “I don’t want anything but you, Jamie,” I said, nervous at what he was getting at.
    He stood up and took me in his arms, walking me over to the field so that we stood between the barn and the dimly lit willow tree. I wasn’t sure why he moved us when I thought he was about to make love to me and let me give him the most special part of me.
    He pressed his head against mine and held our hands up between us. “You’re my everything. You’re my light in the darkness. You filled the hole that was left in my heart when my mom died. When I went back to Ireland without you, and we spent last year apart, it was torture. Every night, I’d look up at the moon and know we were looking at the same thing. It made you not seem so far away. It was then that I realized that there will never be another person in my life who can do to me what you can. You’ve taken my heart, and I never want it back. I want to be with you for the rest of my life.” He brushed my hair from my face and kissed my nose, and then reached for the box he had slipped in his pocket without me realizing and held it up to me with a mischievous smile. “I promise that I will love you forever. Nothing will ever change that. You have touched me in a way that no one else has or ever will.”
    He opened the box, revealing a special golden ring that I knew well. It was his mother’s Claddagh ring that his father gave her on their wedding day. I gasped and covered my mouth with my hands. “Jamie, I can’t,” I whispered through my tears, knowing how true his words must be for him to part with this special memory of his mom.
    He took the heirloom out of the box and held it up to me. “I know we’re young, and I know everyone will think we are crazy, but I don’t care. I know I want to marry you. I know my life will never be whole if you’re not in it. This is my promise to you that I will marry you one day. It’s my promise that I will love you forever. It’s my promise to never give up on us.”

    “God damn you, Jamie,” I called into the wind as I sat crying on the rooftop of my apartment.
    I rarely let myself think about him anymore, and anytime his face comes into my thoughts, I do everything I can to push it away. I hate that a piece of me wishes he’d come back to me. As much as I tell myself I’d never go back to him, and as happy as I am with Mike, I know deep down that if he asked for me back, I’d go. He was the one who had stolen my heart, and he never gave it back. The little piece he left behind was growing day by day with Mike’s love and nurturing, but it was still only a fragment of what it once was.
    I close my eyes and make a promise that if Jamie ever came back for me, I would ignore my heart.
    “Is that you, Alexa? What the hell are you doing up here?” Lee’s voice booms from the other end of the rooftop.
    I wiped the tears away, already a professional at pushing down my pathetic feelings of abandonment. “I couldn’t sleep and decided to water your withering plants,” I said playfully, hoping to distract from