Page 119 of Bleeding Hearts

“What’d she get?” I smile wide.

“That fluffy road flavor you love.” He shakes his head.

“That’s my girl.” I laugh loudly.

“Disgusting, the both of you,” he says teasingly.

“You love us.” I shrug.

“That I do,” he says. “How’s my littlest girl?” he asks, bending down to kiss Nova on the nose. She squeals, immediately holding her arms out for him.

Definitely a daddy’s girl.

He lifts her into his arms, holding her on his lap, and she immediately cuddles into him. I scoot closer to him, and he wraps his free arm that’s not holding Nova around me.

He turns his head to press a kiss to the top of mine, the same way that he’s always done. “I missed you.”

“You were only gone a few hours.” I laugh up at him.

“I always miss you.” He shrugs, unashamed.

“I missed you too, Ash.” I lean my head into his chest, the same feeling of overwhelming love and safety that I’ve always gotten from him enveloping me.

When Asher and I decided we wanted to start our life together, we talked about what that life would look like.

Never in my greatest fantasies would it have been as amazing as it is now.

It felt like my whole life changed after I opened Harvey’s Haven.

I was doing my dream job, living my dream life with my dream guy. I had the best friend group I could ask for, still do, and was building a relationship with my mother I always hoped for.

Once my mom decided to move back to Seattle, selling my childhood home and finding herself a smaller place in the city, she even started unofficially working at the restaurant with me in her free time.

My mom and I are in a better place now than we’ve ever been. She may not have always been the best mother to me, but she’s the most amazing grandmother to my girls.

I never thought my mom would be in my kids' lives, but I’m so beyond happy that she is. She loves them unconditionally, and over the years, she’s begun to show me exactly how much she loves me too.

On top of my mother, I have three other parental figures in my life in Lydia, Emma, and Elias. It’s been more than I could’ve ever asked for, for me or my children.

About six months after I opened Harvey’s Haven, Asher proposed to me with my grandmother’s ring. One that I found out my mother gave him the day he met her at Louisa’s all those years ago.

He said he already knew he wanted to marry me the second she gave it to him, but he waited, wanting to see me accomplish all my dreams before he did.

I fell in love with him a little more for that, if it was even possible.

We got married a year later, a big, over-the-top celebration that made all my princess dreams come true.

Well, technically, we eloped two months before the actual wedding because I got tired of waiting for him to be my husband. But we didn’t tell anyone that until after we had the big wedding too.

Nobody was too surprised, knowing I was not the most patient person in the world.

After we got married and I brought up the topic of kids, Asher was originally scared, and I understood why.

His cancer wasn’t genetic, but the thought of one of our children getting sick, of them having to go through what he did, was unimaginable for him.

It’s not that he didn’t want children. He was just scared he wouldn’t be able to protect them from some of the harsh realities of life.

I told him the truth, that he was right, he wouldn’t be able to protect them from everything. But we’d teach them how to fight to protect themselves, how we’d both done in our lives.

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