“It was something good from that day. Even if I never thought there could be anything good from that time, I was wrong. You were good. We were good. I haven’t felt anything good or right since then, until now, until I saw you again, until I held you again. Marry me, Mia.”
“Nick—”
“I lost myself, and I’m sorry. I heard you, but I didn’t answer. I locked you out, and I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
“Nick—”
She tried to lay a finger over his lips, but he pulled it away and kept going. “We’ll have a baby, Mia—a houseful, as many as you want.” His throat was clogged and dry. Desperate, he took her face in his hands. “I’m yours. I’ve always been yours. Give me a chance to make you happy.”
“Nick!” She curled her fingers around his wrists. “I’ve waited twelve years to say yes. Let me say it.”
“Okay.”
“Yes. I’ll marry you.” She smiled. “No more apologies, no looking back at what we were or what could have been. Just us, as we are now. It doesn’t matter how long it took us to get here. All the years are spread out in front of us. I can see them. That’s what matters.”
His heart breathed a sigh of relief, and he crushed her to his chest, swearing he’d never let her go. Then he did something he’d never done. Not when his parents died, not when Hannah was lost or when she was found.
He cried. His wall was breached. The dam opened. He cried for Mia’s broken heart, for their baby, for the two of them, and for all the time they’d lost. “I love you. So much.”
“I love you, too.” Still holding his face in her tender hands, she kissed his lips. “We’ve struggled. Let’s have our peace.”
Walking her back into their room, Nick drew the robe away, brought her down with him to the cool sheets. Everything was right here, everything he needed and thought he’d lost. He took her hand, pressed a kiss to her palm, feathered another on the inside of her wrist, dragging his lips along the smooth skin of her arm.
“I’m yours,” he said, meeting her eyes, placing her hand over his heart. “I’ve always been yours.”
With tears in her eyes, she caught his face, pulled him down for a soul-searing kiss. Being with Mia had always been a religious experience. Never more than now. Now it was coming home. A reconciliation of hearts that had been lost and now were found.
They savored each other, gave each other all the love they’d once had and even more, all that had built up over the years. Gave and gave until it was more than it had ever been. Passion and peace. How many times had he dreamed of this, of loving her again, feeling her hands on him again?
“I missed you,” he whispered, kissing over her face, down her neck, her breasts. “God, I missed you until I thought I would die from it. I dreamed of you. Some nights it was so real I could hear you breathing, I could smell your hair.”
With her scent surrounding him and her name whispered in the dark, she filled him, his heart and his senses. He ran his hands and mouth over her until she was trembling, and when he drove into her, it was his name on her lips. Not whispered with hope or need or sadness but with faith and love.
In the quiet, she curled against him, fitting like lost puzzle pieces coming back together. They loved and slept and loved again. In the early morning hours, she came awake to him slipping inside her.
She moaned, and he stopped. “Sore?”
“No. It’s good,” she said softly, slowly. “Making up for lost time?”
“Lots,” he said, moving with long, lazy strokes. “It’s going to take a while. We better stay here a few more days.”
“Yes,” she barely managed on a gasp when he slipped a hand under her thigh and went deeper. Higher and higher she went until something inside her burst and she floated along on waves of pleasure. He gave a final thrust then buried his face into her hair.
Here was the love they’d once shared. Here was their peace.
Epilogue
~ One year later
NOT FOR THE FIRST time, Mia and Nick joined Hannah and Stephen at their new home for dinner. Tonight was NFL playoffs and barbecue. And, of course, baby time. Hannah sat next to Mia on the couch, nursing three-week-old Mitchell Michael McKinney.
Anxious for those days herself, Mia rubbed both hands over her belly. Only four months along and already as big as a house. Her age, combined with recently discovered endometriosis, had led to a round of fertility drugs, which had led to not one, not two, but three babies. Two boys and a girl. The only thing she and Nick disagreed about was who was more excited. At the upper end of her child-bearing years, they both figured it was a good deal to get all of them at once.