She gave a rueful laugh. “We are hopeless, are we not?”
“I do hope our children will grow up and be close with one another.”
“They will,” Dorothea replied. “For they will be nothing like Matthew. Quite frankly, I only feel relief that he was transported.”
“As do I.”
“But I do not wish to talk about him ever again, or his obnoxious wife.”
He cast her a curious look. “What would you prefer to talk about?”
“Anything, really,” she replied.
Dominic shifted in his seat, angling himself so that he could fully face her. How could he not love this woman? She had changed the very course of his life. He tightened his grip on her hand and said, “Even in my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined being this unbelievably happy. And it is all because of you.”
“I feel the same way,” she murmured.
Dominic reached up and cupped her cheek in his hand, his thumb brushing a tender path along her skin. “Promise me,” he started, “that when we are old and gray, we will still fight for one another. That no matter what life throws our way, we will choose each other—again and again.”
“I can promise that,” she replied, her hand coming up to cover his where it rested against her cheek.
Leaning closer until their foreheads nearly touched, Dominic whispered, “I cannot wait until our children are older, and we can sit them down and tell them our love story.”
“It all started,” Dorothea whispered, her breath mingling with his, “when I saw you for the first time—and you stole my heart.”
Dominic closed the distance between them and captured her lips with his own in a kiss that was slow, reverent, and full of everything he could not find the words to say.
He didn’t know many things with certainty. Life had taught him how quickly everything could change, how easily things could be lost. But he did know, with every beat of his heart, that he had never loved another as fiercely, as wholly, as he loved Dorothea.
She showed him that love can exist in the most imperfect and broken people. And for that, he would be forever grateful.
The End
