I didn’t want or need to.
As Elvis pronounced Jaxson and Grace married and the chapel erupted into cheers, confetti cannons went off, startling the kids and sending Rowan shrieking with laughter. Grace kissed Jaxson like the world was ending. They were running off for a two-week honeymoon immediately after this — no plans, no itinerary, just them and a little game of airport gate roulette.
I squeezed Shane’s hand, emotion swelling in my chest as he turned to me with tears in his eyes. He pulled me under his arm and kissed me, helping the butterflies in my stomach take flight even after all this time.
There was so much we still had in front of us. We’d talked about what it might look like if we started a family — not in the conventional way, but in the way that felt right for us. We had Georgie’s graduation to look forward to, a home we would build together, and who knew what else.
I’d gone from a life where I woke up every day wishing to disappear to one where every hour filled me with hope and possibility.
A lifetime ago, in that psych class where Shane and I had first met, we’d talked about resilience. About grit. About whether it was something you were born with or something you built.
I’d thought strength meant standing alone. I thought it meant enduring and surviving when all the odds were stacked against you.
Now I knew better.
Resilience wasn’t just internal. It was shared. It was found family and steady hands and people who refused to let you fall through the cracks.
I had grit.
But I also had them — this chapel full of friends who had become the best family I could have ever imagined.
And standing there, surrounded by love and laughter and a man who chose me every day, I knew something deep and unshakable.
I wasn’t just surviving anymore.
I was living.
And the best was yet to come.
• • •
One Year Later
The auditorium was packed, heat and anticipation pressing in from every side. Folding chairs filled every aisle, programs fluttering, names whispered and repeated like talismans. I sat on the edge of my seat, hands clasped tight in my lap, my heart already racing even though Georgie’s name hadn’t been called yet.
Shane, on the other hand, looked like he was preparing for battle.
“I need you to promise me something,” I whispered, glancing sideways at him.
He didn’t look away from the stage. “Depends.”
“Please don’t get us escorted out.”
He grinned before sucking a breath through his teeth. “Afraid I can’t promise that, my love.”
I arched a brow and poked his side in warning, but truthfully, I was smiling inside.
I’d learned long ago that Shane loved Georgie almost as fiercely as I did. And it wasn’t out of obligation, but because Georgie had always been part of his world, woven into the fabric of his love for me from the very beginning. We’d always been a family, even those years we were apart, and Georgie had always mattered to him.
I could still remember that first Thanksgiving we shared together, how Shane showed Georgie how to play bowling on the Wii and somehow calmed a situation that could have turned into disaster.
And now here we were, watching my little brother graduate medical school.
When they announced his residency match earlier this spring, I cried so hard I had to sit down on the kitchen floor. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. His top choice.
He was going to pursue pediatric oncology, just like he’d always said he would.
Georgie had always gravitated toward the hardest medical situations, the rooms where patients were broken, where hope was fragile and desperately needed. He knew what it meant to be a scared kid. He knew what it meant to watch someone you loved fight a battle you couldn’t win for them.
