“Is Agatha’s letter why you talked to your mom about confiding in me?”
He lets out an exhale and nods. “In the end, it wasn’t really a choice. Even though I swore I’d move on after you left, losing you for good felt”—his Adam’s apple works heavily—“unbearable. Her letter gave me the final push I needed.”
His hand moves to my jaw. “So I called my mom and told her that I love you,” he says simply. “I told her that if you’ll let me, Iwant to spend the rest of my life loving you, Gracie. And somehow, she listened. She gave me her permission to tell you everything.” His eyes search mine. “But the only question is, will you let me? Will you let me love you the way you’ve always deserved, for as long as I possibly can?”
In a final splitting crack, my heart seems to burst in my chest, and I realize all the time I thought it was breaking, it was just expanding. Failing to contain all of this love. It rushes through me until a single word breaks loose.
“Yes,” I say through my tears. “I love you, too,” I try to tell him, but he’s already kissing me, and I feel it—the same dam breaking in his chest, concrete walls crumbling and washing away until we’re in the torrent of it together. Suspended and weightless in this sweeping love that we no longer need to hold ourselves back from.
When he pulls back slightly, his smile is too beautiful to smother with another kiss. “So that’s a yes,” he says breathlessly.
“Yes,” I say, my smile so wide it hurts.
He caresses the side of my face. “And you realize you technically just agreed to a lifetime arrangement.”
A wild thrill leaps through me. “I didn’t realize I’d signed any kind of contract.”
“That could be arranged,” he says huskily, gaze darkening.
I lightly smack his chest with a nervous laugh. “You can’t just say stuff like that to a wedding planner! We take lifelong romantic contracts very seriously.”
His lips press to mine, featherlight and adoring, before moving to my jaw, making me shiver. “Who said I wasn’t serious? You of all people should know how deeply I’ve always respected the institution of marriage.”
My laugh is breathless as I cling to his broad shoulders, never wanting this moment to end. I shake my head with wonder. “Jude Larkwood, talking marriage. I never thought I’d see the day.”
He rests his forehead on mine. “Gracie Holland, there is no ceremony I wouldn’t go through, no contract I wouldn’t sign, and no vow I wouldn’t make to call you mine.”
My eyes flutter shut as his words sink into me. “Then I guess I’m yours,” I whisper.
His lips find mine, and this time, it’s the turning of a page. The release of something old. The start of something new. The beginning of forever.
EpilogueGRACIE
One Year Later
I really don’t understand why I have to—ow!”
“Sorry!”
“—Wear face paint. I’m already in costume.”
“You’re literally in the same suit you wore to court today,” I point out to Jude, who is looking supremely grumpy about this turn of events.
When I first told him I wanted to host a Halloween costume party at my studio for the KILN community, he seemed enthusiastic. (“And exactlyhowlittle is your costume going to be?”) Then when I informed him that we would be going as Emily and Victor fromCorpse Bride—our favorite comfort movie—he seemed agreeable enough. (“Convenient. I’ll just go as myself.”) But tonight, when I sat him down in my studio and broke out my makeup kit, he was less than thrilled. (“Isn’t my pallor already ghostly enough?”) It took some strategic lash-batting and a perfectly timed “Please,” but he never really stood a chance.
“I added a vest and changed my tie,” he argues, like his perfectly tailored three-piece suit actually counts as a Halloween costume. “You know I never wear a full Windsor knot.”
“How daring of you,” I say with a laugh, softly blending dark shadow around his eyes. It gives him a haunted look that somehow looks absurdly attractive on him.
“My skin feels like it’s vacuum-sealing my skull,” he says as Itouch up the dark hollows I’ve blended beneath his cheekbones. “Is that normal?”
I roll my eyes with a smile and put down my makeup brush. “There. Done, you big baby.”
I get up to find a mirror, and the ethereal white dress I made for the occasion swirls around my legs in a rustle of feather-light chiffon and tattered lace. Jude’s darkened eyes follow me across the room like he can’t tear them off me, and my stomach gives a little skip beneath the corseted bodice. I’d be lying if I said that wearing a wedding dress in front of him—even just a ghoulish costume version of one—doesn’t make my heart race a little. And maybe it’s fast to be thinking along those lines. But the truth is, starting our lives together has been easier than breathing.
What started as “temporarily crashing” at his place turned into “why move out if we spend every free moment together anyway?” It made things simple, and lately, simple has been hard to come by. Especially after one of my bridal wear designs unexpectedly went viral six months ago, and life became too busy to even think about moving—and too full of reasons to stay.
There are still hard days. He’s gotten two new tattoos since I moved in, and sometimes I’m terrified that my fledgling business will fail all over again. But neither of us ever feels alone now. His mother and I have grown close, and my mom and I go on monthly runs, exchanging smoothie recipes like our own protein-rich version of a love language. Sofia and Henry are also thriving in their relationship (perhaps a littletoowell, if I’m going by our extremely competitive couples’ pickleball record), along with Mrs. Morales and her new boyfriend.
