She nods hard.
“Yeah. But also maybeDonLivy sometimes.”
Stefano wipes beneath one eye and points at her. “That’s legally required.”
The room laughs through tears.
I rise with Olivia in my arms and turn toward Amelia.
My fiancée.
My future wife.
The woman who gave me back a life I never thought I deserved.
She steps into us, careful of Livy’s cast, and rests her changed hand against my chest. My ring shining brightly, letting everyone know she’s mine.
I cover it with mine.
For years, I believed my story ended in a graveyard with two names carved into stone.
With my hands stained red and my heart sealed shut.
But endings are strange things.
Sometimes they’re not endings at all.
Sometimes they’re a woman with cold fingers and brave eyes.
An overly brave little girl with a voice strong enough to call a broken man Daddy.
A brother who survives because stubbornness runs thicker than blood.
Friends who become family.
Pain that leaves scars but doesn’t get the final word.
Sometimes an ending is a room full of people laughing through tears while a child with too much attitude and not enough fear holds out her cast and says, “Daddy, you have to sign it again.”
I look down at Olivia.
“Again?”
She nods seriously. “This one has to say our new names.”
Livy lifts her chin, that little stubborn chin that has wrecked me more times than any enemy ever could.
“Because we said yes.”
For a moment, I can’t speak.
So instead, I take the marker from her hand and write across the last empty space on her pink cast, right by her elbow.
The Morettis: Daddy, Mama, and Don Livy.
My hand stills over the words.
A family.
