Page 40 of Resisting the Handsome Doctor
It won't be easy. There will be logistics to figure out, difficult conversations to have, sacrifices to make. But lying here with Ivy in my arms, I know with absolute certainty that it's worth it.
She's worth it.
We're worth it.
I close my eyes and let sleep take me, already dreaming of tomorrow.
Epilogue - Ivy
Two years later
I'm getting married today.
The thought keeps running through my mind on repeat, like my brain can't quite process it. Like if I stop thinking it, I'll wake up and discover this was all an elaborate dream.
But it's real. The white dress hanging on the back of the bathroom door is real. The flowers being arranged downstairs are real. The sound of my daughter babbling in the next room is definitely, beautifully real.
My daughter.
Emilia Rose Harper is fourteen months old, with Owen's dark hair and my hazel eyes and the kind of personality that suggests she's going to be running this town by the time she's five. Right now, she's with Levi, who insisted on "uncle time" while I get ready, which probably means he's feeding her something she's not supposed to have and teaching her words I'll have to pretend not to hear later.
I love him for it.
The past two years have been a whirlwind. Owen moved back to Blackwater Falls three months after the reunion. Faster than either of us expected, but once he made up his mind, there was no stopping him. He joined the practice at Blackwater Family Medicine, took over Shane's patient list when he retired, and slipped back into small-town life like he'd never left.
Except this time, he had me.
We got our own place six months later—a small house on Maple Street with a porch swing and a yard big enough for the gardenOwen insists he's going to plant every spring and never quite gets around to. It's perfect. It's home.
And then, eight months after Owen moved back, I found out I was pregnant.
That was... unexpected.
We'd been careful. Mostly. Okay, not as careful as we probably should have been, but we were in love and happy and apparently very fertile.
I spent three days panicking before I told Owen. We'd only been together for eight months. We weren't even engaged yet. This wasn't the plan. We were supposed to have more time, more preparation, more everything.
But when I finally worked up the courage to show him the positive test, he picked me up and spun me around and said, "We're having a baby. Holy shit, Ivy, we're having a baby."
No panic. No hesitation. Just pure joy. That's when I knew for certain I was going to marry him. He proposed two weeks later, on a completely ordinary Tuesday evening. We were doing dishes. I was washing, he was drying, and he just turned to me and said, "Marry me."
I almost dropped the plate I was holding. "What?"
"Marry me. Be my wife. Let's do this properly." He was grinning, soap suds still on his hands. "I don't have a ring yet. I was going to do this whole elaborate thing, but I can't wait. I want you to be my wife. I want our baby to have parents who are married. I want everything with you."
I said yes before he even finished talking.
The ring came later—a simple gold band with a small diamond that he insisted on letting me pick out because "I'm a doctor, nota jewelry expert, and I don't trust myself not to screw this up." It's perfect. Everything with Owen is perfect.
Emilia was born on a snowy January morning, three weeks early and absolutely furious about it. She came out screaming, and she barely stopped for the first month. But she was healthy and beautiful and ours, and watching Owen hold her for the first time, this tiny person we made together, I fell even more in love with him.
We postponed the wedding until after Emilia was born. Then we postponed it again because newborn life is chaos and we could barely remember to eat, let alone plan a wedding. Then we postponed it for a third time because Emilia was teething and neither of us had slept in a week.
But now she's fourteen months old, sleeping through the night (mostly), and we're finally, actually getting married.
Today.
In about three hours.
