Page 105 of The Voices are Back

The pure sheepishness on his face was priceless.

“Before next month?” I asked. “That’s when we said we’d get married if we weren’t married by our birthdays.”

He reached down, picked me up by my armpits, and placed me on the counter. “I’ll marry you tomorrow.”

The way he got so into my face to say it sent excitement zinging through me.

I smiled slyly at him. “Tomorrow wasn’t on the table.”

“Tomorrow will be on the table…” He hesitated. “But I kind of like the idea of getting married on our birthdays. Seems fitting. Some of the most important days of our lives happened on that day.”

I leaned forward and placed my forehead against the middle of his right pec, closing my eyes and sighing as the most euphoric feeling rolled through me…contentment.

I was content.

My heart was at peace.

My whole entire being felt like it was finally exactly where it was supposed to be…there. With him. In his arms. Against his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” he rumbled. “I have to eat, then I have to go get Bowie from practice.”

Speaking of Bowie…

“Did y’all agree to let him keep working?” I asked.

He’d gotten a job online. It was completely remote, twenty hours a week, and none other than my favorite stalker friend had helped him come up with the forgery that lied to his employer and told them he was over eighteen.

“We’re going to let him,” Aodhan said. “Yeti and I talked on the phone today. We think that it’s best if we allow it to happen. But if it starts interrupting his schoolwork, or affecting his soccer, then we’ll say something about it. We’re both in agreement, though. This is something he feels like he needs to do, mostly because he does need to do it. He told Folsom when he got this job, and she helped him, that he was going to help pay Wake back for helping cover the cost of renovation. I tend to think that it’s a good idea for him.”

I wrapped my arms around his waist and squeezed.

It was a laughable effort, me giving him a hard hug, but he understood, and returned the hug just as hard.

“What do we do now?” I asked curiously.

“Now?” he asked, pulling back and tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “Now we get to live our happily ever after.”

So we did.

EPILOGUE

Whiskey: the nighttime sniffling, sneezing, how the hell did I end up on the bathroom floor medicine.

-Aodhan to Bowie

AODHAN

Folsom: Congratulations

I rolled my eyes. Why did it not surprise me that she knew already?

Excitement rushed through me as I all but jogged into the hospital.

“Would you slow down?” Morrigan giggled.

Her POTS, although better in the last fifteen years, still wasn’t great, either. Through the years, as she’d aged, her POTS had somewhat leveled out. Now, extreme excitement or surprises didn’t affect her. What did affect her was running, keeping her heart rate elevated, and pretty much any exercising whatsoever that had her upright.

Hence her being on my back as we all but ran into the hospital.

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