32. Danica
— ? —
Danica
The rooftop was perfect.
Our anniversary redo. The vow renewal we’d been planning for weeks. The night we finally got to have the celebration that Stefan’s phone call had stolen from us.
I was supposed to be there at seven.
I showed up at 7:10.
On purpose.
Stefan saw me coming up the stairs and his face cycled through relief, joy, exasperation, and something that looked suspiciously like “I should have known.”
“You’re late,” he said.
I smiled sweetly. “Ten minutes. How’d it feel?”
“Worst ten minutes of my life.”
“Good.” I stepped closer, adjusting his lapel. “Now you know.”
“Evil.” But he was smiling. “I’m about to renew my vows with an evil woman.”
“You love it.”
“God help me, I do.”
The ceremony was small. Just the people who mattered. Evie stood next to me, dabbing her eyes and pretending she had allergies. Nico stood next to Stefan, looking smug about something that probably involved the hotel key card incident.
Mateo was there too, in his tiny suit, officially designated as the ring bearer because he’d demanded the job and nobody had the heart to say no.
And Harriet.
She sat in the front row, spine straight, face carefully neutral. I’d half-expected her not to come. But she was here, watching her son marry the same woman twice, and if her expression was complicated, at least it wasn’t hostile.
Baby steps.
The officiant, a friend of Evie’s who’d gotten ordained online specifically for this, kept things short. We’d written our own vows, and they didn’t need a lot of preamble.
“Danica,” Stefan said, holding my hands in his. “I’ve already promised to love and cherish you. I broke that promise. So this time, I’m promising something simpler.”
He took a breath.
“I’m never late to you again.”
The words hit me right in the chest. Simple. Specific. The kind of promise that meant something because it addressed exactly what had gone wrong.
My turn.
“Stefan.” I squeezed his hands. “I’ve already promised to stick with you through good times and bad. But I kept quiet during the bad times because I didn’t want to be a burden. So this time, I’m promising something simpler too.”
I’d finally opened my own letter that morning, the one from the storage unit, alone on the beach house deck. It was one line long. Whenever you’re lost, baby, come home. So I borrowed it.
I looked into his eyes.
“Come home.”
Two words. An invitation. A promise to keep the door open, to stop running, to let him back in when things got hard.
Stefan’s eyes went bright.
“Hurry up,” Mateo whispered loudly. “I have to pee.”
The crowd laughed. The tension broke. We exchanged rings, the same rings, because they’d never really belonged on anyone else’s fingers, and then Stefan kissed me and it was done.
We were married. Again. For real this time.
The reception was chaos in the best possible way.
Mateo and his little sister running laps around the tables, the caterers giving up and becoming guests, Evie giving a toast that was fifty percent heartfelt and fifty percent embarrassing stories from college.
Nico tried to start a conga line with nine people.
Harriet drank champagne and looked uncomfortable about being surrounded by children, of which there were two.
But at some point, things quieted down. The string lights came on. The music turned slow.
Stefan held out his hand. “Dance with me?”
“Always.”
We swayed together under the stars, my head on his chest, his arms around me. The city sparkled below us. The rooftop dinner we’d never gotten to have was finally getting its moment.
“I’ve been thinking about Term Nine,” I said.
“Term Nine is blank.”
“Not for long.”
He pulled back slightly, looking at me. “What goes there?”
I met his eyes. Took a breath.
“Something that takes about nine months.”
His entire body went still.
“Are you…”
“Not yet.” I smiled. “But next year, maybe. When we’re both ready. When we’ve had time to be us again.”
“You want…” He couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. “With me?”
“With you. Only ever with you.”
His face broke into the biggest smile I’d ever seen. The kind that made him look ten years younger and absolutely ridiculous and completely, utterly in love.
“I’m going to need that in writing,” he said.
I laughed. “It’s already numbered.”
He picked me up and spun me around, right there on the rooftop, while our guests cheered and Mateo made gagging noises and Harriet looked scandalized.
I didn’t care.
We were married. We were in love. And somewhere in the future, there was a Term Nine waiting to be filled in.
It was the best anniversary we’d ever had.