Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112069 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112069 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
"Yeah?" my man said tiredly from behind me.
"I said yes, right?"
His fingers were joined with mine and pressed against my chest. I felt his thumb brush my skin.
"Yes to what?"
"Yes to being your husband," I said. All the foolish doubts I'd had were gone. Completely gone. And I knew in my heart it had nothing to do with the fact that I'd been able to let him make love to me. It had happened before that. It had happened when I'd woken up in his arms… when he'd still been there and so had I.
"Yeah, you did." Luca's lips were at the back of my neck and I was sure I could feel him smiling.
I snuggled closer to him and closed my eyes. "Good," I murmured tiredly. "Just making sure,” I added before the peacefulness of sleep in the arms of the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with claimed me.
Epilogue
LUCA
Three months later
"What do you think?" I asked as I held Remy against my chest.
His back was to my front and he automatically reached up to put one of his hands over one of mine. The ocean breeze was gentle that day, so I had no trouble hearing him when he whispered, "Beautiful."
Coming back to the house in the Hamptons had been a spur-of-the-moment trip after Gio had remembered details about the place. Dr. Taylor had been the one to suggest that a trip to New York might be a good thing for my son to help him continue to remember things from his past.
"I was thinking we might get married here," I said to Remy. "Just you and me and a few people like Gio, my brothers, Aleks. We can do something bigger for our families back in Seattle.”
Remy leaned back against me and turned his head so he could kiss me. "It's perfect," he said. He rested his head against me so he could just watch the water. We were standing near my mother's bench, the one she'd spent hours on every day as she’d watched the water. It made it feel like she was there with us.
“My mother would have loved you,” I murmured.
Remy smiled and closed his eyes for a moment. “I want you to tell me everything about her,” he responded.
That would be an easy thing to do because even though I hadn’t had my mother for long, to this day, I remembered everything about her.
We stood there for a while, just taking in the vast ocean before us. We never really talked about the night I’d promised to bring Remy here to this place because that night no longer defined us. I still had moments that I had to work through where the guilt would become overwhelming, but I was starting to accept that maybe that was just the way things would be. Most days I wouldn't focus on the boy I'd been forced to leave behind but rather the man I'd been lucky enough to find again. On the rare days when I would wonder if there could have been a way I could have saved the young man I'd known only as Billy, it was Remy who was there to hold me and let me go through all those emotions.
To feel them.
Just like I was there for him when the urge for a hit would catch him out of the blue. While Remy had started going to NA meetings again and had found himself a new sponsor, it was still me he came to first when those urges became too much to handle. On the really bad days, we relied on the cold shower method and I held him as he let out tears of frustration and anger. On the days where the need wasn't as prominent, we'd try to work through it using the methods Remy's new therapist had provided.
It was difficult for Remy to rely on others to help him fight all the battles he'd been dealing with on his own for so long. But watching my son go through the same thing had made Remy want to be a role model for Gio. While my son continued to work through his own issues, his relationship with both me and Remy had continued to improve. He was still living at the hospital, but he was spending more and more time with us as he adjusted to what in his life had been real and what hadn't. He’d finally started to accept that Kurt hadn't been his husband, but he was still confused by his feelings for the man. Remy and Aleks were the ones he talked to the most when it came to things related to his abduction. I knew it was just a matter of time before he was ready to share those details with me, but for now, I was happy to take on the role of his father in any way that he let me. And I was beyond eager to have him come home.