He couldn't finish. Just shook his head, jaw working, like the words were too big for his mouth.
"I know," I looked close to him.
Cal didn’t wear a tuxedo, but what he had on was even more breathtaking. He wore his Class A dress uniform, midnight blue, crisp and tailored so perfectly it made his shoulders look broader than I remembered. The silver buttons glinted under the garage lights, and the polished badges on his chest told stories of a bravery I was only just beginning to understand.
But it was the contrast that got to me: the stiff, formal collar of a hero, and above it, those eyes thatlooked at me with such raw, aching tenderness. He looked solid, like a lighthouse in the middle of my storm.
"You too."
Behind us, Liam made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. Probably both.
Doc Martinez cleared his throat. "Shall we begin?"
The vows were simple, but he spoke his promise again, the one he kept just for me:I choose you. I'll keep choosing you. Every day, for the rest of my life.
When Cal kissed me, the crew cheered so loudly that Gabrielle woke up crying, startled by the noise. Joanna bounced her gently, tears streaming down her face again, and I laughed against Cal's mouth because this was my life now. This chaotic, beautiful, impossibly full life.
The marriage license read Lucy Delgado Bennett. My real name, finally, attached to a future instead of a past I was running from.
The badge caught the afternoon light, and I traced its edge with my fingertips.
We'd been in the new house for two weeks. We bought a small place, nothing fancy, but it had a big yard and a porch that wrapped around two sides and a view of the mountains from the kitchen window. The kind of house Mateo and I used to talk about buying someday. The kind of house my motherwould have filled with plants and laughter and the smell of something always cooking.
I'd taken the badge out of the drawer the day we moved in. Unwrapped it from my mother's scarf, held them both in my hands for a long moment, and decided it was time.
The scarf hung in my closet now, next to Cal's spare station jacket. The badge sat on the mantel, right where the light hit it every afternoon. Not hidden anymore. Not something I had to avoid looking at. Just a piece of the man I'd loved first, displayed with honor, remembered with gratitude.
Cal's footsteps came up behind me, and then his arm slid around my waist, pulling me back against his chest. He rested his chin on my shoulder, looking at the badge with me.
"He'd be happy for us," Cal said quietly.
I leaned into him, feeling the steady thrum of his heartbeat against my back. "I know."
And I did know. Finally, after all this time, I was sure of it.
Mateo had loved me enough to want me to be happy. Had loved Cal enough to trust him with his final words, just as he loved me enough to remember me on them. He hadn't asked Cal to protect me because he thought I was weak. He'd asked because he knew, even in those last moments, that we'd need each other. That grief shared was grief halved. That the two people who loved him most might find their way to loving each other.
Some gifts take years to understand.
"I used to feel guilty," I admitted. "Loving you. Like I was betraying him somehow."
Cal's arm tightened around me. "I know. Me too."
"And now?"
He turned me in his arms, cupped my face in his hands the way he did when he wanted me to really hear him. "Now I think he knew exactly what he was doing. Stubborn bastard."
I laughed, surprised by it, and Cal smiled. That real smile, the one he saved for me and Gabrielle, the one that transformed his whole face.
"He'd be so smug about this," I said. "You know that, right? He'd never let us hear the end of it."
"Probably already isn't. Wherever he is."
I glanced at the badge, gleaming in the afternoon light. For a moment, I could almost hear Mateo's voice, that warm laugh, the way he used to say I told you so when he was right about something.
"Thank you," I whispered. To the badge. To the memory. To the man who'd loved me first and loved me enough to let me go.
Cal pressed a kiss to my forehead, and we stood there until the light shifted and Gabrielle's cry drifted down from the nursery, calling us back to the life we were building.
