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I risk looking away to scan the people around us. Mom is crying quietly, Dad’s stoic with his arm wrapped around her, Kayla’s smiling through happy tears of her own, and my brothers are tight-jawed. We’re such carbon copies of each other, and I don’t know how I didn’t see that before.
To Janey, I finish, “I vow to love you the way you deserve to be loved—wholly, intensely, with kindness, and my full attention. I will devote my days to your smiles, my nights to your dreams, and my life to your happiness. I love you, Janey.”
I exhale, relieved. I did it.
“Wow,” she breaths as tears run down her cheeks. I swipe them away gently, placing a kiss to each cheek. “You are good with words.”
I can’t help but beam at the praise. If only she knew how many scribbled napkins, papers, and deleted notes on my phone it took to write those few sentences for her.
“Okay, my turn.” She fans her face, drying her eyes as she blinks. “I should’ve gone first because I don’t know if I can say everything I want to say now. I’m all . . . whoo!”
It takes her a few seconds, but she gathers herself and her thoughts. She takes my hands back, holding them tightly as she speaks.
“At one of my lowest points, you picked me up, dusted me off, and propped me up when I couldn’t stand on my own. You made me feel special. You showed me I had worth and was valuable, exactly as I was. And when I could finally stand alone, you stood with me, not in case I failed but because you wanted a front-row seat to see me rise. Out of all the people in the world, no one has ever chosen me, but you did. You chose me.”
She sniffles, and I gaze into her eyes, acutely aware of the healing she’s done and the hurts she’s let go of.
“You think you’re hard to love, but the truth is, loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done because we belong together. You’re my home, and I’m yours.” She places my hand over her heart, where I can feel the steady thrum of her heartbeat, and lays her palm on my chest. “And I vow to spend forever telling you how much I love you until you have no choice but to believe it, because it’s the truth. I love you, Cole. With my whole heart, for my whole life.”
She takes a breath, and to be fair, I’m not sure whether she means to say more or not, but I need to kiss her. Right now.
So I do.
Stepping forward, I cup her face in my hands, feeling her cheeks puff up in my palms as she smiles, and we seal our vows with a kiss.
“Whoo-hoo!” Kyle shouts, the echo reverberating through the woods.
“Congratulations!” someone else says.
Of course, there’s a lot of clapping from our family. Because these people, all of them, are our family now. Janey is a Harrington, and as complicated as our family may be, we’re going to be the best family she’s ever had.
EPILOGUE
COLE
“This seems like a really bad idea,” Mom warns, sounding exactly like a worried mother should.
But I’m sure about this.
I take Janey’s hand, and we walk down the steps off the back deck of the cabin and into the surrounding woods together. I told her to let me figure out the honeymoon, and I knew exactly what to do, especially when we decided to get married in the larger cabin next door. So our family and friends are getting back in the van to return to the city, but Janey and I are going back to the place it all began.
The little cabin with a loft bed, a hot tub on the deck, and a surprise waiting for Janey.
“Watch out for poison ivy!” Kayla shouts after us, and Janey laughs as she throws her a thumbs-up.
Far out from the cabin, where we can still see our family watching us, I pause and wrap my arms around Janey.
“This spot is when I knew,” I tell her as I look around, smiling. “You sought me out and came to check on me. Nobody’d ever done that before. But you did, with your smiles and sunshine. Right here is when I knew I loved you.”
“You did not,” she argues, laughing. “You thought I was an annoying nutjob who wouldn’t shut up when you were trying to work.”
I tilt my head and grin. “Okay, that too. But deep down . . . way deep . . . I knew.”
She looks overhead like she’s searching for the owl we saw that first day, but it’s nowhere to be seen. “I didn’t know here. I thought you were handsome but stupid, going out without bear spray.” She shrugs like she’s embarrassed by the truth. “I figured it out at the cabin on the porch. You didn’t kick me when I was down. You fed me. That’s when I knew.”
