Page 450 of The Doctors Will See You Now

I moaned at the feeling, and he smiled against my lips.

“I’m going to marry you so hard, Charlotte Hollis,” he whispered.

“I bet I’ll marry you harder.”

“Impossible.” He rolled his eyes and tickled my ribs.

I giggled until he stopped.

“We need to start planning soon,” he said quietly, and I leaned back to meet his eyes. “Do you have any ideas about what kind of wedding you want?”

“Something small,” I answered immediately. “Something that doesn’t involve us inviting a hundred people that we barely know.”

I didn’t think I’d run again—this time, the marriage was right—but I couldn’t help but picture Runaway Bride and cringe. Give me the small wedding now. I’ll skip the four engagements in between, thank you very much.

“Location?”

“City Hall,” I said with a teasing grin.

“Date?”

“Tomorrow.” At first, I’d said it as a joke, but once the words had left my lips, it didn’t feel like I’d said it in jest. It just felt right. Tomorrow was Saturday. Lex was with us this weekend. And Nick didn’t have any surgeries or office hours scheduled.

The more I thought about it, the more perfect it really was. Maybe a little crazy, sure, but God, it felt so so right. It felt like us, starting our lives together the exact way we should, without any big, extravagant wedding or giant cake or five-course meal, but just the three of us.

“Just me, you, and Lex?” he asked, and I searched his eyes for the rebuttal in his words. But it wasn’t there.

“You’re not disagreeing with this?” I asked, and he shook his head.

“It feels right. Intimate. With the only people there who really matter.”

Tears filled my eyes, and I smiled bigger than I’d probably smiled my entire life.

“So, you’re going to marry me tomorrow?” I asked, and my voice rose three octaves higher. “Like, you’re really going to marry me tomorrow?”

“Yes, Charlotte Hollis.” Nick grinned at my enthusiasm. “Tomorrow, I’m going to make you Mrs. Charlotte Raines.”

I squealed and hopped off the bed. “Oh my God! What am I going to wear?”

“First, you’re going to get your ass back in bed, and we’re going to get some sleep,” he said with nothing but love in his eyes. “And then, when we wake up tomorrow, we’ll both be thankful that I’m extremely close friends with Judge Miller and he owes me a favor. Otherwise, making a marriage license and a marriage appear on a Saturday in NYC would be impossible.”

I hopped back into the bed and climbed my way back onto his big, muscular body. “And then what are we going to do?” I asked and waggled my brows.

He grinned, humoring me. “Then, we’re going to get married.”

I squealed again in response, and Nick laughed and kissed me softly.

Before my brain could start panicking again about coming up with a wedding dress last minute, Nick flipped off the lights. He gently slid me to my side and wrapped his arms around my body, cuddling me close to his chest.

“Ugh. I’m too excited to sleep,” I whispered, and I could literally hear his smile form in the stillness of our bedroom.

“Just close your eyes,” he whispered and started gently running his fingers through my hair. “Tomorrow, you’re going to make me the luckiest man in the world.”

I wanted to refute his statement, or at least give an add-on, acknowledging the fact that he was making me the luckiest woman in the world, but his fingers, and my hair, and goodness gracious, a girl could only stay awake so long when they were being gently stroked like a cat.

Tomorrow, I’d get to marry my best friend.

At exactly three in the afternoon, after Judge Miller had pulled through, we were inside the otherwise closed building of City Hall on a Saturday. I had no idea how Nick had managed to pull it all off, but somehow, someway, he did.