Page 184 of His Surrender

Aubrey steps closer. “Dean …”

I shake my head gently. “No. Let me finish. I can’t promise I’m never going to panic again. I can’t promise healing happens overnight. I can’t promise I’ll never have another bad day. But I can promise this …”

I bring one of her hands to my chest. “I will never again make you pay the price for something that happened before I even knew you.”

A tear slides down her cheek. I wipe it away with my thumb.

“My father said something today. He told me if someone had shown him his entire future with my mother”—I pause— “including the day she died … he still would’ve chosen every second with her.”

Aubrey’s eyes glisten.

“He said losing her never made loving her a mistake.” I smile through the emotion gathering in my chest. “I realized I’ve spent nineteen years believing grief was the price of love.”

I shake my head. “It isn’t. The price of avoiding love is so much higher.”

Silence settles around us. The apartment feels impossibly still. The words come out broken.

“I want you,” I tell her. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she whispers. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”

Emotion crashes through me so hard that my knees nearly give out. I close the remaining distance between us and cup her face.

“I know I scared you. I made you question everything. And I know I almost let fear ruin the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” I rest my forehead against hers. “But I’m done letting fear make my decisions. I’m choosing you, us, and I’m choosing every uncertain tomorrow that comes with loving you.”

Her arms wrap around my waist as her eyes find mine.

I kiss her slowly with so much certainty that this is exactly where I want to be.

When I pull back, she smiles at me in that way that still makes my heart forget how to beat.

A second later, Liana begins fussing from the living room. We both instinctively turn toward the sound.

I smile. “I’ve got her.”

I start to walk away before stopping. I look back at Aubrey. “Oh, and …”

She raises an eyebrow.

“You’re still taking interviews.”

“What?” she asks.

“I mean it. I fell in love with a woman who has dreams. I’m not asking her to give them up.” I pick up Liana then walk back over to Aubrey and kiss her forehead. “I’m just asking if she’ll chase them with me beside her.”

She nods through tears. “I can do that.”

Just twenty-four hours ago, I thought loving Aubrey meant living every day waiting for history to repeat itself.

Now I finally understand what my father was trying to tell me. Life is never something I can control, and love is never something I can protect by keeping it at arm’s length.

The future will always be uncertain. There will always be risks. Always be loss waiting somewhere beyond the horizon, but there will also be ordinary Saturdays.

Christmas mornings and late-night laughter. The sound of Aubrey singing softly while she rocks Liana to sleep. The feeling of waking up beside the woman I love.

None of it is guaranteed, but none of it ever was. Maybe that is the lesson I spent nineteen years trying not to learn.

I don’t have to surrender my strength.