We'll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han Read Free Book Online Page A

just want to erase what you did by marrying me.”
    “No. That’s not what this is. What happened the other night”—he hesitated—“it made me realize something. I don’t ever want to be without you. Ever.
    You are the only girl for me. I’ve always known it. In this whole world, I will never love another girl the way I love you.”
    He took my hand again, and this time I didn’t pull away from him. “Do you still love me?” he asked.
    I swallowed. “Yeah.”
    “Then please, marry me.”
    I said, “You can’t ever hurt me like that again.” It was half warning, half plea.
    “I won’t,” he said, and I knew he meant it.
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    He looked at me so determinedly, so earnestly. I knew his face well, maybe better than anybody now. Every line, every curve. The little bump on his nose from when he broke it surfing, the almost-faded scar on his forehead from the time he and Conrad were wrestling in the rec room and they knocked a plant over. I was there for those moments. Maybe I knew his face even better than my own—the hours I’d spent staring at it while he slept, tracing my finger along his cheekbone. Maybe he’d done the same things to me.
    I didn’t want to see a mark on his face one day and not know how it got there. I wanted to be with him. His was the face I loved.
    Wordlessly, I slipped my left hand out of his, and Jeremiah’s face slackened. Then I held out my hand for him, and his eyes lit up. The joy I felt in that moment—
    I couldn’t even put it into words. His hand shook as he placed the ring on my finger.
    He asked, “Isabel Conklin, will you marry me?” in as serious a voice as I’d ever heard him use.
    “Yes, I’ll marry you,” I said.
    He put his arms around me, and we held on to each other, clinging like we were the other’s safe harbor. All I could think was, if we just get through this storm, we will make it. He’d made mistakes, I had too. But we loved each other, and that was what mattered.
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    We made plans all night—where we would live, how we would tell our parents. The past few days felt like another lifetime ago. That day, without another word about it, we decided to leave the past in the past. The future was where we were headed.
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Chapter Twelve
    That night I dreamed of Conrad. I was the same age I was now, but he was younger, ten or eleven maybe. I think he might even have been wearing overalls. We played outside my house until it got dark, just running around the yard.
    I said, “Susannah will be wondering where you are. You should go home.” He said, “I can’t. I don’t know how.
    Will you help me?” And then I was sad, because I didn’t know how either. We weren’t at my house anymore, and it was so dark. We were in the woods. We were lost.
    When I woke up, I was crying and Jeremiah was asleep next to me. I sat up in the bed. It was dark, the only light in the room was my alarm clock. It read 4:57. I lay back down.
    I wiped my eyes, and then I breathed in Jeremiah’s scent, the sweetness of his face, the way his chest rose and fell as he breathed. He was there. He was solid and real and next to me, crammed in close the way you have to be when you are sleeping in a dorm-room bed. We were that close now. The past three days felt like a lifetime ago.
    In the morning, when I woke up, I didn’t remember right away. The dream was there in the back of my head, in a place I couldn’t get to. It was fading fast, almost all the way, but not quite, not yet. I had to think hard and fast to piece it all together, to hold on to it.
    I started to sit up, but Jeremiah pulled me back toward him and said, “Five more minutes.” He was the big spoon, and I was the little spoon tucked into my spot in his arms.
    I closed my eyes, willing myself to remember before it was gone. Like those last few seconds before the sun sets—going, going, and then gone. Remember, remember, or the dream will slip