If Forever Comes (Take This Regret #2)(51)
Author: A.L. Jackson

And I was reeling, staggered by the depth of her words. By what they meant.

“I love you, Elizabeth. Nothing can change that.”

“I’m so sorry it took someone else touching me to make me realize that, to knock me back into reality. If I’d have just held on a little longer, I would have seen, Christian. I’ve felt a change in me, a glimmer of light when I was so lost in the darkness. I know it would have lit on you.”

I brushed my lips over hers, the softest pass, an embrace.

She wound her arms around my neck and buried her face in my neck. “I’m never going to get over her.”

I ragged sigh left me, because I grasped the truth of her words. They were my truth, too.

“No one expects you to get over her, Elizabeth. Neither of us will ever completely heal from it. We lost our child. That is something we’re going to have to deal with forever. It’s never going to stop hurting, but it will get better, and we have to live through it together.”

We had to believe that our little girl was safe, free, that she wasn’t alone or feeling any of this pain we bore for her.

Elizabeth cried, hugging me tighter.

I ran my hand through her hair, whispered at her head. “People don’t always get to love like this, Elizabeth. Not the way we do. It’s a gift.”

I shifted so I could look down at her. “Please don’t ever let it go.”

Epilogues

Elizabeth ~ Seven Months Later

A gentle breeze blew across the rising swell. Ocean waves tumbled in, crashing as they broke on the shore. Rays of sunlight slanted between gaps in the thin layer of clouds hanging in the late afternoon sky. My bare feet sank into the dampened sand, a feeling I had loved since I was a little girl.

Peace settled over me like the warmest embrace.

He stood on our beach just off in the distance. Locks of black hair beat at his forehead as wind gusted in. His face was still all sharp angles, his jaw strong, those lips still pouty and full.

But his eyes. They were aware, knowing and kind.

My heart stuttered as a roll of nervous energy hastened through me.

Yes, Christian Davison still managed to steal my breath. It was no different than ten years ago when he’d first walked through those cafe doors and changed the direction of my life.

I guess I should have known it then, the way he’d made me feel as if he’d knocked something loose inside of me, unleashed something I didn’t know existed.

Lizzie peeked back at me. Her long black hair was all tied up in an elegant twist. It was beautiful and made her look much too old, but she insisted that she have her hair done like mine. She was almost seven, but today, as she paused and looked back at me with a meaningful smile, her mouth so soft and her blue eyes softer, I knew my little girl fully grasped what this day meant to us.

At the end of the sandy path, she veered off to the left and took her spot.

Our guests all stood and turned to face me. There were few, just two short rows of chairs situated on each side. This was the way Christian and I wanted it.

The wedding we’d missed almost a year ago was supposed to take place in a large church overflowing with all the people we knew—friends, family, and acquaintances.

Today there were only those closest to us, those who really understood what we’d gone through to make it here today.

On the left, my sister, Sarah, was surrounded by her husband and two children. Carrie, my youngest sister, smiled at me from within the mix. And my mom, she was there, her expression so kind, so gentle in the backdrop of the rough woman who had worked her entire life to take care of us. There were just a couple others, my aunt and a few cousins.

I looked to the right. Christian’s aunt, a woman I had only met this week, stood there beaming, flanked by her husband who had his arm around her waist. They’d said they wouldn’t have missed this, not for the world.

My attention traveled to the front row and settled on Claire. A wistful smile lifted one side of her trembling mouth. Our eyes met. Hers were glassy and red. She was already crying, twisting a handkerchief in her fingers. She mouthed, “Thank you.”

Emotion expanded my chest, filled it so full, it made it difficult to breathe. But the loss of this breath was not pain as it used to be. This was joy.

It was I who owed her thanks, the one who I would be grateful to for the rest of my life for her son.

My attention was drawn to him. This beautiful man who stood there, staring at me, waiting for me, as if I were his life.

I knew I was, just as assuredly as he was mine.

Never again would I run from him.

The cellist shifted, the strings striking with the song we had chosen for this day. It wound with the wind, crashed with the waves, a soft love song that rose to a beautiful crescendo that called me home.

My steps were slow as I began to walk toward the man who had loved me through my darkest hour, my stride deliberate as my bare feet sank into the sand. The flowing gown swished around my ankles, the back brushing the ground.

Maybe my steps were slow. Maybe it was because I was relishing each one, like each represented an obstacle we’d had to climb, the trials we’d had to overcome. Maybe each one was a triumph, each a celebration.

Even though each step was measured, in reality, I was running toward him.

Running toward my forever.

Because I realized I didn’t have one without Christian.

He was my all.

I stopped a foot from him. He smiled that smile, that stomach-flipping, heart-lurching, earth-shattering smile.

The one that was only for me.

Softly he tilted his head to the side, so many words spoken in his expressive eyes, his love and his devotion, his hopes and his dreams. He cupped my jaw and ran his thumb along my cheek. “You beautiful girl,” he whispered into the wind.

I covered his hand with mine, pressed it closer as I closed my eyes.

And I cherished.

I cherished this man.

My eyes fluttered open and I caught Matthew’s expression from where he stood behind Christian, standing up as his Best Man. What else would he be? He’d stood beside me, beside us for so long. He was our best friend, our family. His kind brown eyes swam in a soft affection, in a relief and a joy of something he’d wished for me for so many years. He’d always told me he just wanted me to be happy.

And I truly was.

Christian slipped his hand from my cheek to my neck, his palm warm against my cool skin as he dragged it down the expanse of my bare shoulder, over my elbow, all the way to my hand.

Chills flashed across my skin, his touch igniting deep within me. No longer was it unknown. This need I knew well. It was something only found in him, a safety and a charge of desire.