“How could I be anything but?” I arched my neck so that I could see his face. “This day has been as close to perfect as possible, and at the end of it, I’m your wife. What else could I possibly want?”
“World peace?” he quipped.
I laughed. “You got me. Okay, so world peace and . . . to know where we’re going on our honeymoon?”
He tapped my nose. “Good try, but no. Thanks for playing.”
I settled back between his legs with a sigh. “That’s okay. I’m actually perfectly content to let that be something you know and I get to find out. I trust you, baby. I know you’ve picked out the most perfect spot in the world. And it will be wonderful no matter what because it’ll be you and me.”
“Well said.” He bent over to kiss me upside down, leaving shivers in his wake. “If I haven’t mentioned it enough, Em, thanks for agreeing to have our wedding here. I know some of your family wished we’d had it closer to them.”
I lifted one shoulder. “Maybe, but this farm is special to both of us. Promising to love you for the rest of my days under the covenant tree was everything I ever wanted. This whole day has been about us, our friends, our family . . . our love.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more.” His hand, resting alongside my cheek, dipped lower, teasing the top of my breast. “And I can’t wait to get you back to the cabin tonight to celebrate our wedding night.”
“You and me both, buddy.” Deacon had moved into the cabin with me months ago, although he kept his house in town for the nights when either of us were pulling all-nighters at the hospital and needed a closer place to crash.
For the past week, though, since my parents had arrived, Deacon had been staying here at the farm with his grandparents, and my parents stayed with me in the new guest room we’d added onto the house. We’d made the decision to spend the week leading into our wedding with our respective families, and I was glad that we’d done that, but I was more than ready to have Deacon back in our bed.
“Did you miss me this week?” His lips were next to my ear, his whisper leaving goosebumps in its wake.
“Every minute,” I sighed. “But tonight, you’ll be back where you belong.”
“Where we both belong.” Deacon dropped a line of kisses from the edge of my jaw to my lips. “From this day on . . .”
“And forevermore.”
Epilogue Two
Noah
“You look beautiful.”
As soon as the words escaped my lips, I wanted to call them back. Not because they weren’t true—they were; Alison Wakely, whom I’d never particularly noticed before in the way a man notices an attractive woman, was undeniably gorgeous tonight. No, the reason I wished I could take back what I’d said was that Ang had taught me never to tell a woman shelookedbeautiful. It was far better to say shewasbeautiful.
Remembering that, of course, brought Angela back to the forefront of my mind, where she’d been lingering all day anyway. This was the first wedding I’d attended since Ang had died. I’d had a few invitations from teammates and cousins since then, but I’d made an excuse for every single one. I’d known all along, though, that I couldn’t miss Emma’s big day. She was too good a friend for me to hurt her that way.
Watching Emma promise her life to Deacon was a lot easier than I’d anticipated. It had been two years since our non-starter of a relationship had ended, and during that time, we’d stayed close friends. At first, I’d struggled with seeing Emma at all. Oh, I’d managed to put on a happy face when she’d broken up with me at my house that day. How could I do anything elsebutpretend I was okay with it? I couldn’t stand the idea of losing her altogether, and I was smart enough to realize that if Emma thought I was nursing a broken heart, she’d steer clear long enough to let me get over it. To get overher.
That—Emma avoiding me—wasn’t something I could handle. Yeah, I wished our futures had lined up better, but deep down, I’d known she was right. Her ambitions went beyond just being Noah Spencer’s girlfriend or wife, and our careers would have inevitably clashed, putting both of us in untenable positions. Still, my heart, which was not healed from losing Angela, had taken another brutal hit. Emma had been the woman I’d counted on to save me from being alone. When she had walked away from my love, not only was I hurt, I felt abandoned.
But there was no way I could let her see that. So I’d been forced to give an Oscar-worthy performance as the jovial best friend, the guy who didn’t give a fuck that his former girlfriend was with another man. The one who even generously offered that new man advice about how to hold onto the woman they both loved. The kind of dude who could have breakfast with that woman after she’d clearly spent the night before having sex with her true love.
Eventually, though, the acting had given way to acceptance. It was impossible to see Emma and Deacon together and not acknowledge how right they were for each other. Angela had been on target there, which shouldn’t have surprised me a bit. And I couldn’t complain about Deacon, who’d made an effort to be my friend, too.
Which was pretty amazing when I stopped to think about it. I mean, if I were Deacon, I’m not sure I would’ve been chill about the woman I loved having a guy like me as her friend. But Deacon didn’t seem to be bothered. On the contrary, he joined us sometimes when we got together for dinner, and he seemed perfectly relaxed when I came over to visit at the cabin. The truth was, it made me like him even more. I couldn’t be unhappy that Emma had wound up with him.
I’d been even more grateful that Emma and I had remained friends when I’d taken that vicious hit during the fourth game of the season last year, destroying my knee. While the team had rallied around me, supplying me with all the medical attention I’d needed, it had been a relief to have someone like Emma in my corner. She and Deacon both helped me navigate the ins and outs of my care and therapy, recommending doctors and hospitals and therapists.
All of this and more added up to me feeling like being at their wedding was non-negotiable. And now that I was here, I was extra-glad I’d come, because it was cool to catch up with old friends . . . like Alison Wakely. The woman I’d just possibly offended by saying shelookedbeautiful.
But come to think of it, she didn’t seem upset. She actually smiled a little brighter, and I got the sense she’d liked hearing it. So maybe this was one tiny instance of Angela not being a hundred percent right.
I wasn’t saying it just to be nice, either. Alison looked . . . I tried to think of the most precise way to phrase it. She looked special. Her blonde hair, which I’d only ever seen her wear pulled up in a tight knot at the back of her head, hung down over her shoulders in fat curls. Her eyes were huge and luminous, and if I wasn’t wrong, they actually looked almost purple.
But the appeal didn’t stop at her face. No, her body was part of the show, too. She was tall—though not as tall as me, natch—with long legs that were on full display beneath her short sparkly dress. She was slightly on the thin side, but not gangly—I guessed that slender would be the right way to describe her.
And when she leaned to the side to murmur something in my ear, the neckline of her dress gaped just enough to let me know two essential facts: one, she wasn’t wearing a bra. And two, she didn’t have an overabundance of boobage, but it was enough to make a man happy.
