We weren’t hiding anymore. No more being careful or sleeping in separate beds.
And although it would take time with my mom, we were slowly making progress.
It would take time, and I had as much as she needed.
My mom was very careful when she spoke with me for weeks. She worried aloud to me sometimes asking if I was sure. How I was doing and making sure I was still happy.
She didn’t fully approve. She didn’t have to. But she never turned away. She loved me enough to keep showing up even when it was hard.
The turning point came when we invited her and David to see our new place. She walked the property with me slowly, touching the rough bark of the oaks, looking out over the meadow we’d already started clearing for a garden.
Inside, she ran her fingers along the new countertops Marcus had installed, studied the photos we’d hung of us at the lake, laughing in the kitchen, and kissing on the porch.
My mom didn’t comment on the intimacy. She just watched us move together, the easy way we touched, and the intimate way we looked at each other.
“You really are happy,” she whispered, eyes shining.
“I am,” I told her.
Before she left, she hugged me long and tight. “Then I’m going to be okay with it. For you.”
I thought back to so many happy, but also hard times, and where I was now.
Everything worked out for a reason.
We spent the evening after dinner on the porch swing, wrapped in a blanket, passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth.
“To taboo beginnings,” he said, taking a swig and passing it to me.
We drank, laughed, and kissed until the whiskey was gone and the night air turned cool. Then he carried me inside, laid me on the rug in front of the fireplace, and made love to me as if we had all the time in the world.
In the quiet after, tangled together on the rug, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my back, he murmured against my hair, “Do you think we’ll ever tire of this?”
I smiled into his chest. “Not a chance.”
He chuckled. “Good. Because I’ve got plans. A garden. A dog. Maybe a kid or two someday. I want it all, Lila. With you.”
My heart squeezed. “I want all of that, too.”
We fell asleep like that, with the fire dying low, his arms around me, and the future stretching out wide and open.
It felt like the beginning of something unbreakable. And we were in it together.
Epilogue
Marcus
The late-afternoon sun spilled gold across the five acres we’d been trying to tame for the last several years.
The meadow was knee-high with wildflowers now, the garden we planted together bursting with tomatoes, basil, and those ridiculous giant sunflowers Lila had insisted on. The scent of fresh-cut pine was thick in the air from the new barn we’d only just completed last week.
I smiled as I thought about making the baby’s crib with the same wood, sanding every edge until it was smooth enough for tiny hands, and then painting it white and adding a little blue flower Lila insisted go on the headboard.
I still couldn’t believe it was real.
Inside, I heard the soft hum of Lila’s voice drifting through the open window. I’d given her some privacy as she’d been on a video call with her team, laughing at something Elena said, her laptop balanced on the kitchen island.
But I’d stopped in the entryway and just watched her. God, she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my entire fucking life.
