Page 80 of No Sweet Goodbyes

Even if I didn’t have it memorized, I still couldn’t break eye contact.

Not any more than I could stop breathing.

“Dear Emma,” I start again.

She’s smiling now.

Good.

I hope I only ever see her smile. Her tears destroy me. Unless they’re tears of happiness.

“You need to know why I pushed you away for so long.”

Her smile is wobbly, and I lean forward to press a soft kiss on the tip of her nose so she doesn’t panic.

“I knew the second I touched you for the first time that you would burn yourself into my very being. And I thought that I knew best. That the worst possible thing in your life would be waiting for me to come home to you and being told that I died. I was horrified that I’d do the same thing to you that Danny did. That I’d leave you, and there wouldn’t be a single thing that I could do to come home to you. And in that nightmare, you always had a little girl in your arms. Our little girl.”

She’s biting her bottom lip now, and I can see that she’s struggling not to cry.

“And that nightmare shifted when I realized that I could lose you. I can’t lose you, Emma. I want that little girl with you. Perfect children who look like you, act like you, are a piece of you. And they can be part of our family. The one I didn’t even know that we had together. Your family and mine. And they’ll have the perfect built-in aunt in Bee. I can’t wait to come home and convince you to help build our family with me.”

I stop because that’s all I had. I didn’t come up with anything else, and I didn’t send it because I felt like it was wrong.

“I didn’t send it because I didn’t want you to think I was manipulating you. But you’re right. She’s going to be okay. She has to be, because she’s an important part of our family together.”

“Dominic Ortiz.” Emma cups my cheek with one of her hands, and I want to lean into it like an animal seeking affection. “Whoever thinks that you don’t talk is a liar. You are literally panty-melting perfection wrapped in muscle and cuddles.”

“Only for you, Emma. Now let’s go see Bee.”

A few more feet down the hall, we stop just inside Bee’s room, and Emma has to lean on me for support.

“Emma,” Bee’s hoarse voice echoes through the room. “Emma, I had a dream you had a wedding.” She coughs and clears her throat. “And I got to be the flower girl.”

“Yeah,” I answer because Emma’s moving forward to take her hand and the two are crying together. “You definitely get to be our flower girl.”

There’s not a dry eye in the room, and I finally feel like I’m home.

EPILOGUE

DOM

Emma doesn’t want to have a traditional wedding march. She says something about it being a ridiculous song, and I just go along with it because I love her more than anything.

So when I stand at the front of the same church my parents were married in thirty years before, to the day, and Maroon Five starts blasting through the speakers, all I can do is laugh. Laugh and watch as the love of my life has the wedding of her dreams.

First, every single one of my groomsmen dance out with a bridesmaid on his arm. Emma picked some sort of red dress for the women to wear, and she told me what the color is called, but damn if I can remember while my heart is thudding painfully in my chest and I’m waiting for her to show up at the end of the aisle. The men are easy, since we all have dress blues sitting in the back of our closets.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Five groomsmen and five bridesmaids take a hell of a long time to make their way down the rows, dancing and having fun. The entire time, I’m starting to sweat in the wool of my dress uniform, and I want to unbutton the damn thing.

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