He smiled at me. “I want to say something, but I’m afraid it will scare you away.”
“There is nothing,” I said, “that could possibly scare me away at this point, Adam. I’m pretty much all in.”
He nodded, and I knew he felt the same. “I’ve spent some time wondering why I felt so compelled to right this wrong. I mean, I didn’t have a loved one in the tower. I had no real stake in any of it.” He paused for a moment, his fingers trailing lazily up my arm. “And this is the crazy part. When I saw you in that post office, when we had lunch that day, when I knew your dad had been killed, it was like all the pieces of my life finally fit together, all the things that didn’t make sense suddenly did. I think, even though I didn’t know you yet, Sloane, I had been fighting for you all that time, like my heart knew that one day I would meet you and I had to be able to tell you I hadn’t watched this atrocity happen to you without trying to fix it.”
By this point I had scooted away from Adam. I was sitting on my knees looking at him, rapt with attention. My heart was beating wildly, the butterflies in my stomach having baby butterflies. When I didn’t say anything he said, “I’m sorry. I knew it was too much. I wish I hadn’t said anything.”
But I shook my head and moved closer to him until our faces were only inches apart. “Adam,” I said.
“Sloane,” he replied.
“I love you.”
He smiled and pulled me to him, kissing me. “I love you too,” he whispered. “I know it seems crazy, but I absolutely do with everything I am.”
I wrapped my legs around his waist and kissed him again. I began unbuttoning his shirt, pausing to pull my own over my head. My rational mind would have reasoned that his parents were right upstairs, but I was way past being rational.
“Sloane,” he whispered. “Are you sure about this?”
He knew I was a virgin, knew I had never had feelings like this for anyone.
“I have never been so sure of anything in my entire life.”
I knew I had only known Adam for two weeks and I might never see him again, but I didn’t care. If he left and, God forbid, something happened to him, I would always regret that I hadn’t shared this moment in time with him and him alone.
His poor mother probably didn’t have this in mind when she picked that soft sheepskin rug for in front of the fireplace. In that moment, our worlds collided, and I knew he was it for me. I was made to be with Adam.
The night before he left, through our tears and heartache, he got down on one knee in UGA’s Founders Memorial Garden and said, “Sloane Murphy, you are the love of my life. Will you marry me?”
It was a proposal exactly like Adam. Simple and direct, but passionate. And I knew I was the luckiest girl in the entire world when I said, “Yes.”
He slid a gorgeous ring on my finger. “My grandmother’s,” he said.
I smiled. “So, your parents?”
“My parents couldn’t love you more,” he said. “They said they knew from the moment they met you, just like I did, that we were perfect for each other.”
Six months later, my sisters, on the other hand, still thought I was crazy. And my mom was a wreck. They didn’t think we had known each other long enough to get married, didn’t think we understood what we were getting into. What they didn’t understand is that when you’re getting to know someone normally, there are so many distractions. You go to movies, parties, cookouts, baseball games. You share the inane details of your days at work, binge-watch trashy reality TV shows. But is any of that connection? Does it help you know what’s inside the other person’s heart? Not if you ask me. At least, that’s what I told my mother nine weeks before Adam came home, and, contrary to what my family believed would happen, our wedding was still on.
Every day for eight months, I had written my future husband a letter and received one in return. I had spent eight months asking those important questions, sharing things about myself that I had never shared with anyone, and sending them off to the US Postal Service’s care, hoping my words and, much more importantly, my love would reach him.
So, while my family begged me to change my mind and pleaded with me not to be so hasty, I believed with all my heart that I knew this man better than anyone. I knew his soul, the recesses of his mind.
I knew he wanted a small wedding, just like I did. Nothing like Caroline’s five-star Manhattan blowout, paid for by James, despite our mother’s protests that his picking up the tab was tacky. So we booked the church, picked out a dress, put deposits down on a band and a caterer, and ordered tents for the front yard. All the while, my mom put on a happy face. But when it came time to order the invitations, the veneer cracked. That’s when I realized that her happiness for me and her proclamation that nothing would make her happier than having Adam for a son-in-law was a farce.
“Sloane, honey,” she had said hesitantly, “you don’t have to do this, you know. You don’t have to go through with it.”
I was shocked and so hurt. “Mom, why would I not go through with it? He’s the love of my life. I’ve never been surer of anything.”
She had crossed her arms and leaned on the counter, looking around as if one of my sisters might jump out from the cabinets and save her. “But you don’t know him, Sloane. You knew him for three weeks. I know the whole soldier-off-at-war thing is romantic, and I
