Till Death Do We Part

Chapter Thirteen

"What do you mean I shouldn't go?! It's my Dad's fucking funeral, for Christ's sake!"

My ears pounded fiercely as I slammed the dresser drawer and whirled around to face Joseph, my hair falling wildly in front of my eyes. I had been crying earlier, when I was telling Joseph about Dad's death and that I needed to help make arrangements for the funeral and wake and everything else that happened when a loved one dies, but when he had suggested that we skip the funeral all together, my sorrow turned to red-hot rage.

"Not suggest, Sienna. He said you shouldn't. It certainly wasn't a suggestion. He doesn't want you to go."

"I just don't think it's a good idea for you to go, babe. That's all."

Joseph stood between me and the small suitcase I had sitting on the bed we now shared, some of the contents pouring out of the bag. I thought staying with my Mom while we sorted everything out and got ready for the funeral and wake would be a good thing, but the more Joseph argued with me the angrier I got. What the hell did he think he was doing?

"He's my father, Joseph," I snap. I brush past his shoulder and continue to shove items of clothing into the suitcase, then twist out of his grasp to collect some toiletries from the bathroom. "I can't believe you're trying to keep me from putting my own flesh and blood six feet under the ground, and that you don't want me to go stay with my Mom and help her through probably the hardest thing she has to go through. It's so incredibly selfish of you."

"I'm not being selfish, Sienna, I just--"

"Just what?" I interrupt, casting him a glare over my shoulder. "Just don't want me to say goodbye to my Dad, even though I didn't really have a chance to even do that? Or support my own mother? You'd rather I just sit here, wallowing in my own self-pity, while everyone else goes to the funeral and wonders why Dad's only daughter didn't even show her face? Is that what you want, Joseph?"

My voice raises an octave as I speak the last sentence, the tears beginning to fall once again. I wipe them away fiercely with the back of my hand and as I'm slamming the medicine cabinet I barely have time to register the fact that Joseph had crept up behind me until it was too late.

With a strength I never knew he had, Joseph whirls me around to face him and pins me against the wall, pushing me harder than I had expected him to and his hands gripping my forearms so tightly it stung. He leaned down only slightly to stare intently in my eyes, his blue-grey irises burning into me as he kept me still against the wall.

"Joseph," I tried to whisper, but the word was so soft-spoken I couldn't even hear myself say that. I felt my heart in my chest flutter wildly to a rapid beat of panic, and a sudden feeling of dread washed over me as his cold eyes looked me over and his hard hands kept my arms still from moving. For a moment, I began to question who it was that I had fallen for and moved in with over the span of a few short months, but then his eyes closed and he let out a deep breath, and when his eyes opened again they were no longer cold and calculating, but warm and inviting, like they had been the first day I had met him. His grip on me had also loosened, though not too much, and I no longer felt that fear. In fact, I wondered if I had ever felt it at all.

"I don't want you to go because you shouldn't have to and you don't need to," he says quietly after a moment. "I've been to a funeral before, love, and all it does is bring more pain to you. It doesn't help the healing process. You still feel that empty hole inside your chest where a piece of them was, you still miss them more than anything you've ever felt every day, and you'll only surround yourself with people who will apologize for your loss and talk about them as if they knew you as well as you did. You're hurting, Sienna, and it's best for you to heal on your own terms in your own place with someone who won't tell you how sorry he is, because they know sorry isn't going to fix anything or make it better or change what happened. But they will be there for you, and listen to you cry, and hold you tightly and never let you go. They'll take care of you when the good days go bad and the bad days go worse, and they'll still cherish you and treat you the way you should be treated and try to make you feel the way you should be feeling, even when it seems like nothing will go right, because they don't want to lose you to the tragedy."

He pauses at this, almost debating his last words before he speaks again. "They can't lose you to the tragedy, because they care about you too much. They... they love you, and they want to always be by your side."

It felt as though time had frozen to a standstill as he uttered those words, and I could hardly get my own voice out as he lets my arms go and slowly sinks down to one knee.

"What... what are you saying?" I whisper, though I already know the answer to my own question.

"I'm saying I love you, Sienna Arydelle Williamson, and I'm asking you, in our darkest and hardest hour, if you will do me the honor of becoming my wife, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, 'til death do we part. I'm asking you to let me be your husband during a time of sorrow and pain, so that not only we can mourn the life we lost, but cherish in the blossoming of a new beginning and maybe make way for another life."

I could feel my face drain of any color, could feel the lump form at the back of my throat. Part of me wanted to laugh, another wanted to cry, and the other wanted to slap him for the absurdity of it all. Out of all the times this man could propose to me, why now? Why in the middle of dealing with my father's sudden death, in the middle of an argument, when it feels like everything in my life is too fragile to cling to in this moment? And why so soon, so suddenly? We had only been together for a few months, why rush everything?

As if he could read my insecurities and fears all across my face he takes both my hands in his and holds them gently to his chest, his lips brushing along my knuckles.

"Sienna, I know how crazy it sounds asking you to marry me after only such a short time. But I have never felt such a strong to pull someone than when I had met you. I would go to the ends of the earth and back, face Hades, walk on burning embers and shards of glass for miles, if it meant I could take all your pain away, but I can't. But what I can do is swear to you that I will always be here, that I will always love you and cherish you, that I will always be here to help you through your hardships. I believe that God has a master plan for us, Sienna, and I don't think us meeting in the park was an accident. I truly believe it was meant to happen, that we are meant to be together, Sienna. I love you." 

He stops speaking for a moment to stare into my face, his blue eyes lit with such hope and love I found myself drowning in them. Could I really do this? Could I really marry a man so soon? I wanted to say no, to turn away and run screaming in the opposite direction, but Joseph had a hold on me, something I couldn't easily escape from. And the longer he held my gaze and kept my hands in his, the more I realized that maybe Joseph was right. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be, and that we really were meant to be together.

"Please, Sienna," he whispers. "Marry me."

I couldn't shake the unease that flooded through my system as I replayed our interaction only moments ago. There had been something there that I had never seen in Joseph before, something dark and unwelcoming, and part of me screamed that there was something wrong with this, that it would be a mistake to agree to marriage.

But I stepped over the edge anyways, and the words left my mouth before I could even process what I was saying, before I could see what a huge mistake this would be in the end.

"I do."