Page 124 of Rent Free

My smile had to have been huge as she started walking—yes, walking—toward me.

It’d been a very long road.

Forest, who’d been our ring bearer, leaned into my side, babbling happily about what I thought was princesses.

He’d gotten a whole lot easier to understand in the last six months—whether that was because he was bigger now or because I was able to translate baby alien—so I could tell he was comparing her to a Disney princess in her white, puffy gown.

It had to weigh a ton.

It had so many rhinestone crystals on it that the sun was catching all of them and sending out tiny little rainbows all over the ground as she walked.

She truly did look like a Disney princess.

My Disney princess.

She didn’t stutter in her walk at all.

Three months ago, when she didn’t think she would be able to walk, it seemed impossible to me as well. But she was a determined woman.

The doctor’s outlook had been correct.

She would walk just fine.

The doctor was also optimistic that she would run, too—but only if she wanted to.

Looking at her now, you wouldn’t guess that she’d been almost crippled six months ago.

She finally arrived at my side, and the man at my back—Garrett, because he’d thought it would be funny to get ordained and officiate—said, “Mr. Emmanuelle, do you give this woman’s hand in marriage to this man?”

Emmanuelle looked at me. “I do.”

Something passed between us.

A promise that I would take care of her now. That he would no longer have to worry—at least if he remembered to worry—about her ever again.

Because I would be there for her, forever and always.

The wedding ceremony went fast.

There were no objections—but I had a feeling that if Sage was out of jail, she would have found a way to get here and ruin it.

Two days after Emory and Sage had purposefully hit Pepper with her car, I’d raised an unholy stink with the DA’s office, and the DA had officially ‘retired.’

He better be glad he did, because I’d made it my mission from that moment on to make his life a living hell.

As it was, the Carter Clout was enough that the DA had moved out of Dallas completely. He would never work here again, if I could help it.

As for Sage and Emory, both of them were spending the foreseeable future behind bars.

Their trials had come and gone.

Emory, who’d been driving, got seven more years than Sage’s thirty-four.

My hope was that they’d die in there.

Bitches.

“Hey,” a cool hand touched my cheek.

---