“We’re either making the best decision or the very worst decision of our lives,” I whisper.
“Look at me,” he murmurs. I force my eyes open and stare into his. “I’ve already made the worst choices in my life. So I know that you’re the best decision. Iknow,without a doubt.”
Everything that I’ve refused to name agrees with him. I smile and try not to let it be too watery. “Me too. I want all that.”
He smiles, kissing me right there next to the stupid phone that nearly tore my heart out.
“Just think, if I hadn’t paid for this room with the add-on feature of a fire keeper, we might never have met,” I murmur.
Edries huffs. “I guess I wasn’t paying for solitude whenIpaid for this room. I paid for the backdrop to the best mistake to ever happen to me.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a mistake,” I say. “Maybe it was Santa.”
He laughs. “I don’t care what or who’s to blame, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“We still have a lot of days to change your mind.”
Edries shakes his head minutely, his forehead against mine. Our eyes locked, though too close to truly see each other. “No,” he says quietly. “The only thing that’s going to happen over the next several days is me falling further in love with you every single day.”
Okay, that’s it. A tear escapes down my cheek. “I want that,” I whisper.
“You already have it.”
EPILOGUE
EDRIES
One year later
ECCENTRIC BILLIONAIRE EDRIES FRANKLIN GOES AWAY ON SOLITARY CHRISTMAS RETREAT TO MOUNTAIN AND RETURNS WITH A HUSBAND.
I thinkabout the headline for maybe the hundredth time this week. It was the first thing that greeted us when we left the lodge, where we extended our stay by two weeks and got married. Yeah, maybe it was jumping the gun. Maybe it was ill-advised. Maybe we doomed ourselves before truly giving our lives together a chance.
Yet, it’s still the best decision I’ve ever made.
A smile is never far from my lips, especially not when I’m wrapped around him. Holding him close, feeling his body heat seep into me, warming all the chilly cracks that were there for too many years.
I hear the kids trying to be quiet just beyond the door, but their excitement can’t be contained. It only makes me smile wider.
A lot has happened in the past year. As I suspected would happen, Bernice remarried, and I doubt this second time was for love, as she told me it would be. And as I also predicted, she lost interest in our kids. Which, as much as it hurts them, I’m stupidly thankful for.
As soon as I got them back, I hugged them each for a long, long time and apologized over and over for the shit they’d been through. Not just since our divorce, but the oppressed childhood they had until that point. We had a long talk, and I promised things would change.
“Starting with your husband?” my oldest, Liam, asked.
I couldn’t tell what his thoughts on the matter were, but I nodded. Gabe was in the room already. He’d been there for the entire hurricane since coming home and the media having a field day with this twist in my life.
“Yes,” I told him. “Starting with my husband.”
“Mom says you were having an affair,” my ten-year-old, Theodore, says.
“She says that to make herself feel better. Your mother is very good at being a victim without?—”
Gabe clears his throat, and I suddenly hear the words coming out of my mouth. I cringe. “You know what? I’m not going to talk about your mother. Your only jobs are to be kids, not deal with the burdens of your parents. You can talk about her as often as you want and I’ll very happily listen, but I will never say another bad or mean thing about her. Okay?”
I didn’t imagine the way all three of their shoulders relaxed.
A transition in parent figures from a mom and dad to two dads was perhaps the hardest thing for them. They liked Gabe right away. I mean, who wouldn’t, right? But getting a grasp on Dad’s now bisexual and there isn’t going to be a mom in the picture was difficult for them.
