Chapter 18
The moment the camera shutter clicked, Liana Langston was transported back to the winter of 1980.
She had just turned twenty–two when Adrian Graham wrapped her in his army coat and brought her to the county clerk’s office.
The clerk had smiled as he handed her the form, and she hadn’t even known where to begin filling it out.
That first night, she curled up in the corner of their bed, trembling. Adrian had coaxed her gently, repeating, “Don’t be scared.”
When her mother–in–law gave her a hard time, it was Adrian who stood up and said, “My wife did nothing wrong.”
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Even the first time she burned dinner, he ate it without a single complaint.
He was so good to her that she forgot a person could live on their own.
So when they brought her his blood–stained military badge, she smashed the bottle of pills and slit her wrist, as if breathing without him was a crime.
Until the day she overheard him say, “She’s tougher than my Zoe.”
The moment she fell from the third floor, she suddenly learned how to bear suffering.
Learned to brush off gossip. Learned, even, how to say yes to Miles Lawson’s marriage proposal.
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The sound of the embossed seal jolted her back to the present.
Miles was carefully tucking the marriage certificate into his chest pocket, his fingers brushing the spot above his heart.
The gesture was too familiar–so familiar it made her eyes sting.
Once upon a time, someone else had treated their marriage just as tenderly.
As the flashbulb went off, Liana suddenly realized-
Even a withered heart could grow new shoots.
Miles’s warmth seeped through his crisp shirt, like sunlight breaking through a frosty windowpane.
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She absently tugged at the edge of her floral dress, her heart pounding so fast it startled her.
“A little closer, guys!” the photographer called cheerfully.
Miles suddenly froze like a block of wood.
He could feel her lashes brushing his cheek, could smell the faint floral scent of her hair, could even hear her rapid heartbeat-
Thump, thump, thump.
It matched the rhythm inside his own chest.
“…I…” His throat bobbed, sweat soaking the back of his uniform. “I’m going to splash some water on my face.”
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Liana watched him stumble away, walking awkwardly in uncoordinated steps–and suddenly, she burst out laughing through her tears.
How strange. The love she thought Adrian Graham had shattered beyond repair… was slowly being pieced back together by this man’s clumsy retreat.
Outside the window, the trees rustled in the breeze, whispering: See? Isn’t life worth living?
Click!
A flash lit the room. The afterglow still lingered in Liana’s eyes as the marriage certificate was pressed into her hand.
Miles’s fingers repeatedly traced the embossed seal, rough pads brushing over
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the seal to make sure it was real.
The date–April 20th, 1985–burned like a brand into his heart.
From this day forward, the name Liana Langston was finally, officially, written in the spouse column beside his.
“Thank you,” he said hoarsely, slipping a pack of Marlboros into the clerk’s hand–saved for
this moment.
The rustle of the wrapper echoed the first one he’d ever peeled open in the back row of a high school classroom, secretly ready to hand to her.
Mountain wind rushed through the wooden windows of the office, lifting one corner of the certificate.
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In the photo, he stood tall in uniform. She, in her soft floral dress, leaned in so close her eyelashes cast shadows across her cheeks.
Twelve years.
Over four thousand days of silent longing had finally come to rest in the damp spring air.
Miles suddenly turned away, wiping his face roughly with his uniform sleeve.
When he turned back, his eyes were red, but he grinned like a kid who’d just won a prize.
“Honey,” he beamed, “ready to go home?”
Liana pressed the marriage certificate to her heart and nodded.
In the distance, ice shards on the snowy
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peaks glittered like thousands of tiny crystals.
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