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“Not if I have anything to say about it. My next stop is going to be her. But… If she says yes, I want you to come.”
“Your father won’t be happy.”
“Then he’ll have to be unhappy. I think everyone has been far too unhappy for too long. Something has to change. And somebody has to take the first step. It wasn’t going to be me. But Stevie… Stevie told me that I needed to fix this. Because I have let it decide who I am for far too long. She was right.”
“Adonis… Go and get her. So that I can be at your wedding.”
“I will. And… Mother, I hope to see you there.”
* * *
Stevie was planting flowers in a pot. No, she wouldn’t be able to put them outside yet, but it felt like a defiant thing to do. To plant new life in the face of all this icy cold. In the face of the dead, stagnant feelings in her heart. She would not be crushed. Of that she was certain.
She was so committed to her endeavor that she didn’t hear the door open. But there he was then, standing there like an apparition. Like a flower in the snow.
“Adonis…”
“Stevie, I came to tell you that I did what you said. I went and saw my mother.”
The rush of dizziness and relief that she felt was inexplicable. Because he hadn’t said anything about the two of them. And yet. She knew it was connected. She did.
“Oh.”
“It was in the media, but I’m certain that you didn’t see it, because you don’t care about that. And you never did.”
“I didn’t,” she said. “I only ever cared about…” She felt her heart begin to fracture. “I only ever cared about you.”
“I know,” he said, kneeling down where she was, putting his hand over hers, over the potting soil. “I know. And I cared about you, but I didn’t know what to do. I chose the fearful thing. What felt like the easier thing? And I told myself that because it hurt it was the right thing. I think I inherited a streak of martyrdom from my father. I regret embracing that. I thought that because I lived a seemingly indulgent life I was not like my father. But I am. Inflexible, self-protective. Though, perhaps even more truthfully, I’ve taken pieces from my mother and my father, and fashioned them into a wholly unique, dysfunctional human being who doesn’t know how to give or receive love. But I want to. Because I do love you. I didn’t know how to accept that you loved me. I didn’t know how to show it. But it matters. It matters so much. Because I can’t live without you. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to continue on this legacy of isolation. I want you to marry me. And I swear to you, I’m not going back on my word, not again.”
Stevie believed him. Because now it was easy. Because now she knew. Her own power, the power of what was between them. Because somehow, she felt stronger for having had to face the loss of them. It hadn’t destroyed her. It had hurt. But she had come out with even more love for herself, and because of that, it made it easy to accept what he offered now.
“Yes,” she said. “I want that. I don’t care about being your princess. I want to be your wife. Because I love you.”
“I love you too. It is as gloriously simple as that.”
“And yet very, very complicated,” she said.
“Yes. But you know, I think we can handle it. Because for all that we are very different, we are also the same. The same heart.”
“Yeah,” she said. “We are.”
“Do you think that you…could fly us to the wedding?”
She tilted her head back and laughed. “I mean, are you sure about that? You don’t think we might end up on a mountainside again?”
“If we did, I’d marry you there. In fact, I think maybe I should.”
EPILOGUE
AdonisAndreadishadalways thought his wedding would be extravagantly beautiful. But he hadn’t imagined it on the side of a snowy mountain in the middle of the wilderness, with only spare few people in attendance, and his mother sitting proudly at the front, watching as he pledged his life to the woman of his dreams.
Their fathers were there also, seated together, best friends now against all odds, and defying the prognosis their doctors had given.
They were both determined to live to see their grandchildren.
This was his life. This was his wedding.
His entire life had changed the day that he had met Stevie Parker in a frozen airport.