Page 114 of A Light in the Darkness
All at once, I realize what’s going on, and terror shoots to my toes.
“You don’t have to do this,” I whisper, leaning into him. “I’ll give the baby your last name regardless.”
“I don’t just want the baby to have my last name.” He laughs. “I want you to have it, too. I told you that.”
“Come on,” Wes chuckles. “This can’t really be a surprise, can it?”
“Nope.” Victor winks when I catch his eye. “He told me months ago that he was going to marry her whether I liked it or not.”
“Okay, maybe I should have waited to do this in private.” Remy laughs, shaking his head and focusing on me again. “Iwantyou to marry me, Claire. I wantthis… it’s unusual, but it’s our family and I love it. But most of all, I love watching you every day growing our daughter, healing the hurt for not just me, but all of us. I want to celebrate Christmas in July for the rest of my life… with you.”
“Remy,” I breathe. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if there are any words that fit a moment like this.
“I…” I can’t believe this is what he really wants. It seems so…normal, when we are anything but. We haven’t been normal from the start. Our match may have been preordained by some twisted bitch called fate, but that doesn’t mean that this is what was in our cards.
“Do it for me.” Rhea says, drawing my attention to where she’s standing, tucked under Dimitri’s arm. She’s holding Charlie, who’s got a fistful of her hair in his sticky fingers and a candy cane in his other hand. “I’ve always wanted you to be my sister. Make it official.”
“Marry us.” Michael teases. “We’re all a package deal now.”
“Oh, God,” I sigh. “If Michael is part of the deal, I can’t accept.”
There’s a moment where my words hang in the air, like everyone’s trying to decide whether there’s any truth to them.
“That’s rude, Claire!” Michael gasps, holding a hand to his chest as if I’ve just critically wounded him. “I thought we had something!”
“I can replace him,” Remy assures me, his mouth tilting up just the slightest. He leans into me, and I realize he’s still down on his knee. “I can replace any of them, but not you.”
It’s so absurd I want to laugh, but instead, I end up crying. It’s just a single tear… not the first I’ve cried, and I guarantee it won’t be the last.
“Yes.”
The word’s barely left my mouth when Remy slips the ring on my finger and the ceiling explodes in a blast of confetti and glitter like snow. The squeals of the kids eclipse almost everything, but I can hear the chorus of cheers from the adults too.
I don’t even get a chance to admire it, because he grabs my wrists, placing my hands on either side of my belly, and plants a kiss right in the center of them.
“Hear that, princess? I’m making an honest woman of your mom.”
THE END
Epilogue
REMY
When my life flashed before my eyes as I lay bleeding on the back of the bus, it was only Claire that I saw, a beautiful highlight reel of her smile, her touch. But if I were to die now, it would be with this single image stuck in my head like static. I thought I knew beauty because I love a woman who is a masterpiece, but I’ve never seen her more beautiful than when she holds our daughter.
The light in her eyes is unlike anything I’ve seen from her—brighter than when she waltzed into my life wearing that sexy lingerie. I watch her come together right in front of me, bits of her that I never realized weren’t there, and the minute she holds our daughter, they fill in.
Elena Lauren Boudreaux.
It’s a big name for such a little girl, but it suits her. Those bright eyes of her mother’s take us all in without a worry in the world, as if she has all the trust in us not to screw this up. And to be fair, we probably won’t. There’s too many of us to screw it up.
Claire sighs, soaking in the last minutes of quiet we may have the rest of our lives. Rhea handled things on the home front, but she’ll storm in here in the next ten minutes and then all bets are off.
“You’re astounding.” I say, rubbing a knuckle across the smooth expanse of Elena’s tiny cheek. Her lips are pulled into something like a pout, but otherwise, she’s sleeping peacefully now.
“She’s incredible.” Claire agrees, pride oozing in everysyllable.
When she senses my eyes on her, she glances up at me, recognizing I have something to say. “She is, but I was talking about you.”
