Page 66 of Her Age Gap Match

"I'm really glad I sent that email."

He laughed, his chest moving under my cheek.

"Me too, baby," he said. "Me too."

Epilogue

JOHNNY

I was about to become Bloom Matchmaking Agency’s latest success story.

It was May in Chicago, and we’d brought my bike down from the distillery last weekend—wanting it to enjoy on those sunny days, to ride along the lake. Poppy’s arms were wrapped around my waist, her hands linked together, an emerald sparkling on her left hand.

She’d said yes just last night.

Then she’d reached out to Sophie to talk about next steps…to talk about kids.

This was what made Bloom different, of course—matchmaking from making the match in the first place, to marriage, to having kids. Poppy said it was where Sophie really thrived, where she enjoyed the work the most. She liked seeing couples fall in love and have babies.

And I wanted to give Poppy babies more than I’d wanted most things in my life.

“Is it weird that I’m nervous?” she asked as she dismounted and pulled her helmet off, looking around. “I mean…it’s kind of weird that I work here and now I’m going to be talking to my boss about like…how many kids we want to have, how often we’re having sex…”

"It's a little weird," I said. "But Sophie's seen everything. She's not going to blink."

"She's going to blink," Poppy said. "It's me."

I took the helmet from her and hung it off the handlebar, then caught her hand—the left one, the ring catching the May sunlight the same way it had caught the candlelight last night when she'd looked at it for the first time.

She'd cried a little. Pretended she hadn't. I'd let her pretend.

"You've sat in on probably a hundred of these conversations," I said. "You know exactly how it goes."

"That's different. I was on the other side of the desk." She looked up at the greystone, the window boxes Sophie had replanted for spring, the small hand-painted sign. She was here for work and for the meeting—still had her job and didn’t intend on leaving anytime soon—but I could tell she was seeing it in a different light. “I’ve never been a client before."

"You're not just a client," I said. "You're Poppy."

She looked at me.

"Which means Sophie already knows everything she needs to know about you," I said. "She just needs to meet me on this side of the desk."

Poppy considered that. Then she squeezed my hand.

"Okay," she said. "Let's go make some babies."

I laughed—surprised out of me, the way she still managed to do at least once a day—and followed her up the front steps of the place where I'd spent two years finding elaborate reasons to linger, finally walking in as exactly what I was.

Hers.

Jasper was waiting at the desk, and his eyes darted up with a sly grin as soon as the door chimed.

“Ah…Mr. and Mrs. Lawson, here for your eight o’clock?” he said.

Poppy rolled her eyes. “Stop. I just saw you yesterday.”

“Yeah, but you were clocking out then and now you’re here for an appointment,” he said. “A big fancy appointment with your big fancy—” His eyes darted to Poppy’s hand. “Oh my god. Fiancé?”

Poppy gave him a bashful nod. “Mmhm.”