Page 355 of Saving Forever with the Hockey Captain

Inside the cabin, someone has arranged flowers across the dining table where a homemade cake waits in the center. Across the top, written in careful blue icing, are three simple words. Forever Starts Today.

Annette looks around the room slowly, her eyes filling once again. "You did all this?"

I shake my head. “We did."

I glance around the room, my parents, her parents, Coach and his wife. The guys. The women.

The people who carried me when I couldn't carry myself.

The people who loved Annette long before she knew they would.

Family. Not all related by blood, but every one of them chosen.

Tonight... I finally understand.

Joy, hope and love look like this, a cabin full of people you love, the woman you've chosen for forever standing beside you, and the beautiful certainty that home isn't a place you return to.

It's the life you build together.

Chapter forty

Annette

Until Forever

Five months later…

I wake before the alarm.

For a moment I simply lie there, listening.

The inn is unusually quiet. Somewhere downstairs, I can hear someone setting a coffee mug on a countertop. A gull calls from somewhere over the lake. Beyond my window, gentle waves lap against the Briar Cove shoreline.

It feels like every other morning, and nothing like every other morning.

Today I'm marrying Jamie.

The thought makes me smile before I've even opened my eyes.

I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling, letting reality settle over me.

I push back the blankets and walk barefoot to the window.

Morning sunlight dances across the lake, turning the water into thousands of tiny diamonds. The docks are still quiet. The little bakery down the street won't open for another hour.

Everything feels peaceful.

Maybe that's why I notice that there aren't any butterflies, no panic, no second thoughts, only a deep, quiet certainty.

I think that's what love becomes when it grows up.

Not fireworks. Not uncertainty. Peace.

I wrap my arms around myself and smile out at the lake.

***

Months ago, I worried about today for reasons that have nothing to do with weddings.