“Yeah. Ahem. About that…” Nash tugged at his collar. “I tried to tell you. At least twice. Ryan did it. I had no knowledge beforehand. We were supposed to get a substitute officiant, and the paperwork was supposed to be BS but…” Nash stopped.
“But it wasn’t?”
“It wasn’t.” His shoulders fell. “Baby, I am so sorry.”
She threw her arms around him, being very, very careful of his injured shoulder. A bullet had grazed him there, and Nash liked to act like it wasn’t a big deal, but an injury was an injury, and she never wanted to hurt him.
His hands curled around her waist. “Delaney?”
She buried her face against him. “I love you.”
“Delaney, I know it’s not the wedding you wanted. You wanted a beach, you wanted daisies, you wanted?—”
Her head whipped right back up. “You remember all of that?”
“I remember everything when it comes to you.”
Her heart seemed to swell in her chest. “It was never about the beach. Or the daisies. It was about you.”
“I want to give you the world,” he told her, voice gruff. “I am so sorry for the pain I caused you. I am so sorry for the years we lost. You are all that I’ve ever wanted. You are my life.”
“The past is over.” They could not live in the past. Pain and regret? No, she was done with that. “I want you to be my future.”
“You’re mine. My future. All I want. All I ever wanted.”
She didn’t glance back through that one-way mirror. What was the point? Everything she wanted—everything that Delaney had ever needed—waited right in front of her.
Nash’s head lowered.
She kissed him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“The third time is the charm.” Ryan patted Delaney’s hand as the waves crashed into the shore. “That’s the idea behind this marriage, isn’t it?”
Not another marriage. More like a final ceremony. Because Nash had insisted. He’d said that he wanted to do things right.
They were on a beach. She was carrying fresh daisies. Nash’s family was there. His parents beamed at him from their spot in the front row of the carefully arranged line of chairs. And Agnes had actually already headed down the aisle, sniffling and dabbing at tears as the matron of honor made her way across the sand.
Delaney wore a dress she’d designed herself, one very similar to the long-ago dress that she’d sketched out when she used to fantasize about marrying Nash and having a happily-ever-after with him.
The sun had drifted low in the sky. The golden hour was upon them.
Nash waited. A smile curved his lips as he stared at her. She couldn’t help but smile back as joy filled her. “He insisted,” Delaney replied to Ryan.
It had been two months since the nightmare in Vegas. Two months since Nash had been told to dig his own grave, and, instead, Kurt had gotten locked away for life. Delaney had turned over all of her grandfather’s assets and holdings to the CIA. The agency was still ripping away at the fabric that had been Typhon’s world—both when Typhon had been Carmello Ricci and when Kurt had been ruling the criminal empire.
She’d grieved for her father. Her mother. She’d gone with Nash to visit the grave of his biological mother. They’d even met Nash’s biological father, a man who had never known about Nash’s existence and who’d cried when he’d met his son. His bio dad was at the ceremony, too. Watching. Smiling with everyone else.
Time had passed. The physical wounds they’d all suffered had healed. Now…
Nash wanted her to marry him at the ceremony of her dreams. A renewal ceremony, technically, since they were already legally husband and wife.
No organist played. The Wedding March didn’t drift through the air. She could smell the crisp scent of the ocean and hear those wonderful, pounding waves.
But before she moved down the aisle, her head turned toward Ryan. “Thank you,” she told him.
“For what? Tricking you into a real wedding back in Vegas?” He winced. “I need to apologize for that, don’t I?”
