Epilogue
Iwas getting married. Again.
Not to Naija, despite Felicity’s jokes. To Cassian. Again.
My hand smoothed down the front of my dress. It was a soft pink, flowing gown that fell in loose layers around me, the fabric bunching into gentle folds and spreading out as it moved. Felicity had spent twenty minutes arranging it, and Naija had spent five minutes telling her to stop fussing.
The music had started. I could hear it through the doors, the opening notes of something old and familiar.
Can’t Help Falling in Love.
Naija and Felicity had already walked ahead. I could see them through the gap in the doors, taking their places. Naija’s expression was calm.
Felicity was already crying.
Mrs. Garcia appeared beside me, her arm sliding through mine. She pressed my bouquet into my hands.
“Nervous?”
I let out a breath. “I’m marrying the same man for the second time.”
“So that’s a yes.” Her eyes crinkled.
I glanced at her. We were working together again. Garcia’s and Velaré’s collaboration had grown beyond anyone’s expectations. Every new restaurant that opened in a new hotel, I was there. Every press release, every launch, every quiet conversation about what came next.
The music swelled.
The doors were about to open.
“A little,” I admitted. The words came out soft. “Just… a little.”
She squeezed my arm. “I’m here. No matter what.”
I smiled at her.
The doors opened. Light spilled in.
I took a breath, and we walked.
We were in our new house, getting married in our garden.
The garden was already perfect. Cassian had spent the last three months making it so. Not just tomatoes anymore. There were roses climbing the trellis he’d built himself, lavender along the path, and a small apple tree that he talked to every morning.
He proposed the day we moved in.
I had just stepped out of the bathroom, the door clicking shut behind me, when I stopped. My feet wouldn’t move. My breath caught somewhere between my chest and my throat.
He was on one knee in front of me, a ring box open in his trembling hands, his face tilted up toward mine like I was something he’d been waiting his whole life to see.
He was nervous. I could see it in the way his fingers trembled, the way he kept opening his mouth like the words were right there and then disappearing.
“I had a whole speech. But my whole mind is blank right now. So I’m just going to say everything that comes to mind.”
He took a breath. Let it out. Started again.
“I wanted to propose the day you decided to give me another chance.” His voice was low, rushed, like he was afraid that if he stopped, he wouldn’t be able to start again.
“The day you kissed me in my office. The day you made me that cake. The day you said you loved me back. And then every day after that.”
His voice cracked.
“But I wanted it to be perfect. I kept thinking—not yet. Not perfect enough. She deserves perfect. She deserves something so beautiful she can’t say no.”
My throat was tight. I pressed my lips together.
“I wanted it absolutely perfect. So you would know. So you would see how much I love you.” A breath. “I had it all planned. After we moved in, I’d recreate our first date. The escape room. I’d get it all exactly right, the way I should have done it years ago. And then I’d ask.”
His eyes were bright, his jaw tight.
“But tonight. Before you left the room. I was standing here, looking at this house, and I said—I finally gave you your home back. And you—” His voice cracked. “You said, without even thinking, without missing a beat, you said, ‘You’re my home.’ And you kissed my cheek and left.”
A tear slipped down his face.
“You’re my home too, Alessia. You’ve always been my home. I’ve been so stupid, trying to find the perfect way to tell you. The perfect moment. The perfect words. Like I had to earn it. Like I had to deserve it.”
He looked up at me. His eyes were wet, his face open, his whole self laid bare at my feet.
“I don’t care about perfect anymore. I don’t care about any of it. I just want to ask you.” He took a breath, unsteady. “So, Alessia. Even if this isn’t perfect. Even if I’m not perfect. Will you marry me? Please?”
I was crying before he finished. I didn’t know when I’d started. I didn’t care.
I moved toward the side of the room, toward the nightstand where I had hidden it. The drawer slid open quietly in the hush of the hallway. My fingers found the box, small and velvet, and I carried it back to him.
He was still on his knees. His face was pale, his hands open in his lap, his eyes tracking me like he was afraid I’d disappear.
I sat on his leg, and his arm came around my waist immediately, steadying me, holding me close. I opened the box.
His eyes dropped to it.
His lips quivered.
“I have a ring for you now,” I said.
Years ago, when I had proposed the first time, it was because I needed to know.
I needed to know if he loved me. His hands showed me, his eyes showed me, the way he showed up every day and never left showed me.
But his mouth wouldn’t say the words. So I asked him to marry me instead.
I thought if he said yes, that meant he loved me.
He told me some time ago about the ring in his pocket that day. About the months he’d carried it, waiting for the right moment. About the way his hand had brushed the box every time he reached for my hand. About how he’d almost given it to me a hundred times before I beat him to it.
We were both so silly. Both so afraid. Both reaching for the same thing in the dark, not knowing the other was reaching too.
I took the ring out of the box. It was warm in my palm. Gold and brown diamonds were scattered across the band, catching the light—the same brown as his eyes, the same gold that flickered there when he looked at me.
“I love you so fucking much,” he said. His voice was wrecked. “I don’t deserve you.”
I touched his hand on my waist. Removed it gently. Held it in front of me. He was still wearing his wedding band—the one I had put on his finger in a courthouse years ago. He had never taken it off. Not once. Even when I had forgotten him.
“You do.” I slid the ring onto his finger. Gold and diamonds settling against his skin. “We both deserve each other.”
He looked down at his hand. At the ring I’d given him. At the ring he’d never stopped wearing.
Then he reached for my hand and slid my ring back onto my finger.
It was the same ring.
But now, when I turned my hand in the light, something caught my eye.
My breath stopped.
Between the stones. In the spaces he had left, the small gaps that separated each diamond.
Words.
Etched so fine they looked like scratches at first, like the metal had caught on something. But when I brought my hand closer, when I let the light hit just right, I could see them.
In his handwriting.
The one I had seen on a thousand sticky notes left on the counter, on the little drawings he’d leave on my mirror when I was running late, on the little notes he tucked into my bag before work that I pretended not to find until I was already in the car.
I love you.
He had carved them into the place where only I would feel them. Where they would sit against my finger every day, hidden from the world, pressed close to my skin—a secret only I would ever know.
So that’s what he was doing.
I’d wondered why the ring disappeared from the nightstand where I kept it when I went to sleep. Why he kissed my head so softly when he thought I was already asleep.
He lifted my hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the ring. Then to my palm. Then to my lips.
It was perfect.
Walking down the aisle to him was perfect too.
His eyes moved over me slowly, drinking in the dress, my hair, the flowers gathered in my hands. Then they settled on my face.
On my smile.
On the tears I hadn’t bothered to hide.
He didn’t look away once.
Then his hands moved.
The words he had learned to say with his hands before he could say them with his voice.
I love you.
My heart squeezed.
It always did. Every time he signed it, every time he said it, every time he looked at me like that.
I passed my mother and she smiled at me.
I returned it. It was a smile that came more easily these days.
I could meet it without bracing myself for whatever old ache used to follow.
We had lunch once a month now. She talked too much.
I let her. There were still moments when I found myself watching her across the table, quietly astonished that this was what having a mother could look like in your thirties.
It was strange.
But it was good. It was getting good.
Cassian’s groomsmen stood beside him. Rohan had straightened his tie three times, each adjustment making him look less satisfied with it than the last. Mr. Garcia, meanwhile, was beaming as though he were the one standing at the altar.
Naija and Felicity stood on my side, matching dresses, matching grins.
I’d given Naija my apartment last week.
When I handed her the keys, she’d turned them over in her palm and said, “Best boss ever.”
I’d smiled back. “You still have to pay rent.”
I reached Cassian. His eyes were misty, his throat working, and his hands reached for mine before Mrs. Garcia had even finished passing me over. He wiped his eyes with the back of his other hand.
Mrs. Garcia smiled at him. “Take care of each other.”
He didn’t glance at her.
His eyes were on me. They had been on me since the doors opened.
I squeezed his hands, trying to lighten the weight I could see settling in his chest. “You look good in pink.”
“Not as good as you.” His voice was rough. He cleared his throat. “I was worried you were going to run away. That Mrs. Garcia was helping you do it.”
I pressed my lips together. “Damn it. I didn’t think of that. Maybe next time.”
He smiled, his hands tightening around mine. “You look so beautiful, I l—”
“Can you guys save the flirting for the honeymoon?”
Liam was standing at the front, his arms crossed, his expression the particular mix of impatient and fond he’d been wearing since he agreed to officiate.
“Some of us have places to be.”
My eyes narrowed. “Are you forgetting who has the bouquet?” My eyes flickered to Felicity. “I thought you were eager to get married.”
His face shifted through approximately four emotions before landing on something like panic.
“Is five minutes enough for you guys?” He was already looking at the crowd. “You know what, that’s not enough. We’ll all leave. Take all the time you need.” He was already gesturing. “Everyone, if you could just—”
Cassian cut him off. “Just shut up and marry us.”
Liam looked at him, wounded. “Are you sure you want to marry this guy, Alessia? Just look at how he talks to his best friend.”
“He learned that from me.”
“Alessia’s my best friend,” Cassian said at the same time.
Liam shook his head, and he was smiling, wide and helpless.
“Fucking made for each other.”
He cleared his throat, pulled out the paper he’d been clutching for the last ten minutes, and started talking.
The words washed over me, familiar and new. Something about love. Something about choice. Something about the life we’d already been living.
“Hey, Cassian?” I whispered, low enough that only he could hear.
He glanced at me. His eyes were bright, his face open, his hands warm around mine.
“Yeah?”
I smiled. “I love you too.”
I squeezed his hands.
“Now let’s get married.”