He should have done this years ago.
“Uh,” he turned to Trent, ignoring Carter’s mom like she wasn’t even there, which probably served her about right.
“Well, umm…” Carter’s dad rubbed the back of his neck. “The… I… yes?” he squeaked, looking up to meet Trent’s eyes. “It wasn’t meant to come out like that.”
Trent swooped, tackling Mr. K into a bear hug and laughing the whole time, picking him up and twirling him around like he was a dainty princess instead of six feet and two hundred pounds of lean muscle.
Nurses were hardcore.
“Is this a yes?” Mr. K asked as Trent put him back down, blushing bright red all the way to his hairline.
Under the tablecloth, Carter’s hand slipped into mine. I squeezed his fingers, then linked them with my own for good measure.
This was a happy moment, but it was alsobig. He didn’t need to cope with it alone.
I was here.
If he’d just ask me to stay, I’dalwaysbe here.
“It’s a yes!” Trent said, holding onto Carter’s dad by his forearms, fingers tensing around them. “I don’t wanna cry in public,” he added, but I could already see tears shining in his eyes.
Carter squeezed my hand back, pushing the tablecloth away and grabbing the wall to drag us both to our feet.
As predicted, every muscle I had hated me for lying on the hard, cold floor all night.
“Cry all you want,” Mr. K said, his voice impossibly soft. “I mean it. I wanna be with you.”
“They’re socute,” I whispered to Carter, grinning so hard my face hurt. This was the best thing I’d ever seen.
“Dad told me that Trent told him it didn’t matter that it took them this long to find each other,” Carter said. “As long as they found each other eventually. Because he was worth waiting for.”
I swallowed past a lump in my throat.
I’d had a similar thought about Carter. That it wasgoodthat he hadn’t looked twice at me in high school, because that would’ve been weird. Thatthiswas how it was meant to be. I’d seen him, and I’d known he was…
The one?
Maybe?
Shit, that was ahugethought. Too big to think all at once.
But I could handle the little corner of it that wentthis feels right. Because it did feel right. Everything about it, right down to Carter’s warm fingers curled into my hand, the pad of his thumb stroking my knuckles.
I was glad things had gone the way they had. Whatever happened next, I was glad I’d had him, even for a little while, right now. When he needed me most.
Fate had never really been the kind of thing I thought about, and I wasn’t sure it was real anyway, but the universe had a funny way of working things out.
“Are youtryingto ruin your own daughter’s wedding?” Carter’s mom spat, wiping the ecstatic glow right off his dad’s face.
She had a talent for that.
He turned to look at her while Carter sidled a little closer to me. Part of me wanted to slip away while her attention was elsewhere, but the rest of me didn’t want to abandon his dad while he was vulnerable.
“Did you ever think to ask her what she wants?” Mr. K asked quietly. I was glad he wasn’t raising his voice, since I wasn’t sure I could take shouting this soon after waking up.
Carter, I supposed, was used to it. That urge to bundle him up in a blanket and tell him he was good and worthy and didn’t deserve any of this welled up again, my stomach hurting at the thought of him going through it all alone.
“She wants to be princess for a day!” Carter’s mom said. “Like every girl wants.”
