Page 114 of Protected By the Sinner
“Are you sure this is what you want?” Amos asks, holding my hand. “There’s still time to back out.”
Anyone else might think he’s joking, but I know he means it. Amos would whisk me away in a second if I said I had changed my mind.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. I’m just feeling a little anxious.”
“He’s crazy about you. I wouldn’t let you marry LeBlanc if I believed otherwise.”
“Me neither,” Elodie adds, and I shake my head, smiling.
“You two are insane. It’s way too late for me to back out,” I say, and my eyes instantly land on my daughter in Lilly’s arms. She’s wearing a dress identical to mine, just like my sister-in-law’s twin girls.
As if sensing I’m talking about her, Violet starts bouncing in her aunt’s arms, and Beau turns around. Our little girl is restless, and now that she’s started, she won’t stop until her dad picks her up.
Amos’s wife hands her over, and her chubby arms wrap around my fiancé’s neck, her drooly little mouth—probably from teething—planting a big kiss on his cheek.
I watch as he holds her tight against his chest, and I start crying.
I pull away from my siblings and run to them, hugging both at once.
“I just broke every protocol,” I say, trying to dry my tears. “But I got so emotional seeing you two together. We’re a real family now, my love.”
“Protocols are for normal people to follow. We’ve never fit that mold, Amber. Our love doesn’t fit any definition. Never has. Never will. I love you, my Romani bride.”
Epilogue 1
New Orleans
Months Later
“Ball, mommy?”
“Yes, the most colorful one, sweetheart.”
“Pink,” she says, handing me the ball she picked, a bright pink one with little silver stars.
I smile, thinking that for Violet, every ball could be pink. Maybe the whole world is pink in her pure, innocent eyes—my forever baby. She loves that color.
I look at my little daughter—so eager to help me decorate our Christmas tree—and my heart swells in my chest.
I did it,I whisper to myself.
I finally have a home where I can celebrate Christmas, birthdays, and New Year’s Eve. Walls covered in framed pictures of us and her father—and soon, of the little boy on the way: my Lucien. A family gathered around the dinner table, enjoying life’s little pleasures, such as the three of us snuggled in bed on a Sunday morning. My husband, relaxed and half asleep, with Violet napping on his chest and our mutt—the son of Amos and Lilly’s dog—curled at our feet.
My siblings are notnearbybut always present for the moments that matter.
Being called sister, aunt, sister-in-law, mom, wife. Building bonds. Creating a family. Loving and being loved. Belonging to someone, to a home, to a family.
Ambition is relative.
Mine is summed up in everything I have now, and it has nothing to do with living in a ten-bedroom mansion but everything to do with knowing that, day by day, my family and I are building our story.
We have a story.
Not a perfect one—not a prince finding his princess and living happily ever after—but the story of two broken, guarded, wounded souls. A couple still smoothing out their rough edges, who met through a lie, yet chose to fight for their own version of “forever.”
Fairy tales don’t appeal to me. I want real love. The kind that sometimes means ripping each other’s clothes off out of shared stubborn frustration, and then, the next day, becomes slow, deep, and full of whispered promises.
“This is going to be the prettiest tree in all of New Orleans,” Beau says, catching us by surprise, and Violet goes wild.
