Epilogue #2
It wasn’t the wedding little girl’s dream about. It was better. Because it was real. Because it was us.
And then, our song played.
“I met you in the dark; you lit me up. You made me feel as though I was enough.”
The first chords of Say You Won’t Let Go by James Arthur spilled from a tiny speaker, and my heart caught. I’d sent him that song all that time ago, a few days after the night he showed up at my work and came clean.
I had been at my most vulnerable, and he’d offered reassurance I didn’t even know I needed. That song had become ours. A reminder that we’d fight for each other and never let go. Because it reminded me of the exact moment I stopped running and started letting myself hope.
He pulled me up, right there on the grass, laughter still buzzing around us.
His hand at my waist, his other lifting mine, clumsy but firm all the same.
We swayed beneath the trees, kids chasing each other in circles around our legs, family snapping pictures, cake plates abandoned on the blankets.
His forehead rested against mine, his lips brushing my temple as he whispered, “I love you.”
I once thought love meant survival, holding it all together, never leaning, never letting anyone close enough to leave.
But with Hunter, I learned differently. Love was showing up.
Love was letting myself laugh again, play again, dance barefoot on the grass with the man who saved me from my own walls.
Looking at him with our kids clinging to his legs and our family cheering us on, I knew: he wasn’t just part of my story.
He was home.