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Chapter Thirty-Three
Jude
My girl throws her cap high in the air, wide smile carving an arc through her gorgeous features, and I can’t help but feel that smile pulling at the edges of my own.
Our friends and family are hollering their asses off—the Masons wiping away tears, my brothers whistling loud with fingers pinched between their lips the way our father taught us to when we were kids, Boss and Addy holding up a giant, hand-painted sign and pressing down on loud-as-fuck air horns held above them, my friends going wild, tiny-as-hell Bianca bouncing on the balls of her feet—managing, somehow, to accomplish all of the above at once. My smile stretches wider.
I love watching Declan be celebrated like this. Because she’s earned it, and she sure as fuck deserves it.
I join in the pandemonium our group is causing, hands cupped around my mouth to project the sound as I holler out, “Let’s go, baby! You fucking did it!”
Her head swivels toward me instantly, and when she picks me out in the crowd, she runs for it. She makes it up the stairs and over to me in thirty seconds flat—tears raining down her cheeks, smile wide as can fucking be. She throws her arms around me as I lift her in mine, and her wild, long hair blows in my face. I bury myself in it. Still pink, but lighter now, blending more effortlessly into her natural color.
“Congratulations, baby,” I speak the words into her neck, arms wound completely around her, hands cinched at her sides as I hold her against me tight. “You did it.”
“I really did it,” she echoes, and the words are constricted, caught up at the back of her throat.
“You sure as fuck did.”
“I’m so…proudof myself,” she follows up in a whisper, soft enough for only me to hear.
And fuck, but I get choked up as well. Because I’m so goddamn proud of her, too. Words don’t feel like enough to express how much, but I still tell her anyhow, “Me too, baby. Me too. I always knew you would, but it’s fucking amazing to have a front row seat to watch it all happen.” I lower her to the ground, releasing her from my hold for only a moment before I take her cheeks between my palms, knocking down softly into her forehead with mine. Blue eyes reel me into their depths as I say, “You know what this means now, right?”
Her lips tip into a grin, but she tries to tamp it down by mashing her lips together. What she accomplishes is an adorable cross between a shy smile and a confident smirk. “What’s that?”
I kiss her nose, her cheeks, each one of her eyelids. “It means I’m spending every goddamn fucking day with you from here on out, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I’m talking marriage, babies, the whole nine.”
“What if I don’t want to do anything about it? What if I want all of that, too?”
My lips tip into the widest grin I’m certain I’ll ever wear. “That’s what I’m fucking talking about.”
Her light breath of laughter fuels every beat of my heart. Her laughter has come far easier, and hell of a lot more frequent, this past year, and it’s something I’ve been grateful for every day.
Being around to witness it, being the one often responsible for it, is not something I take for granted.
I kiss her again, soft and then deep, and then I circle back around to soft again before I manage to pull away. I look deep into the bottomless ocean of her eyes. My heart constricts,weighted by the love I feel for her. A love that has grown and transformed and flourished even more over the past four years. I never could’ve imagined—that night we ran into each other in the hallway—that she would end up being my forever person.
I knew something was different. My visceral reaction to her. The way I was drawn to her. The way I couldn’t stop fucking finding myself near her no matter how hard I tried to keep my distance.
And then, the way things quickly changed. Walls crumbled. Secrets unearthed. And I found that I didn’t mind sharing them with someone, when that someone was her.
She took caution with my heart, as well as her own. Allowed me to fall for her slowly, deeper each day, until I was well within its depths. Until I realized that loving her, for me, was inevitable.
Life happens to us whether we’re present for it or not. Before Declan, I thought I had healed, but I was simply moving through the motions. One foot in front of the other, one day after the next. Declan helped me heal in a way I wasn’t prepared for, but in a way I desperately needed. Someone to see straight through me to the pain and haul it up to the surface. To be felt, understood. To be seen. Every scar, and to be loved anyway. That’s the gift she’s given me. And I plan to repay her with my love in return, every day for the rest of my life.
I see those same sentiments mirrored back at me through her eyes, and we’re the only two in existence, at the moment, until the rest of the world bleeds back into our awareness. The soft tap of my mother’s hand on my shoulder is what does it, drawing us back into the present.
We turn toward my mom as one.
“You sweet, beautiful girl,” Mom signs to Declan. “We are so proud of you.”
“Thank you, Elena,” Declan uses my mom’s name sign, anEpressed to the corner of her eye. “That means so much to me. I’m so happy you’re all here.”
“We wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s a very special day.”
Declan smiles warmly, and then she’s enveloped in a swarm of hugs and congratulations, pictures and more pictures being taken, heartfelt words from Addy, Boss, and the Masons, and even more from our family and friends, laughing on the phone with Jameson, Parker, and Williams.
The seamless blend of the people in my life and the people in hers strikes a chord within me. An acknowledgment of, and a gratitude for, the life we’ve begun to build together. I’ve never been more excited to see how the rest of my life will unfold.