Page 136 of Billionaire Unbroken - Asher
She loved me.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t known that, but hearing her actually say those words hit me hard.
“I love you back,” I told her gruffly. “But I’m sure you already know that. I’m definitely going to be spending the rest of my life trying to be the man you deserve.”
How could she not know how I felt?
I’d been crazy about her almost from the beginning.
Whether I deserved her or not, she was mine now.
I kissed her because a herd of stampeding wild horses couldn’t stop me from doing it.
For better or worse, no matter what happened, she was absolutely stuck with me forever.
Asher
Five and a Half Months Later…
“It’s over,” Cole said as he slapped me on the back in the waiting room of the hospital.
Everyone had left earlier, but Cole, Lauren, and Sierra’s mom were still here.
Lauren and Martha were visiting with my wife in her postpartum room.
Cole and I had stepped out so we could talk while the women were talking about the birth.
My daughter was stable in the NICU, and my wife was doing well after the C-section.
Kaylee Marie Remington had been moderate preterm when she was born at thirty-two weeks.
It had been a planned C-section because it hadn’t been safe to leave my daughter in the womb any longer.
My girl was tiny, but she was healthy. She’d need a stint in the NICU, but she’d grow and hopefully thrive over the next month or so until she could go home.
My wife had undergone a salpingectomy directly following her C-section so we’d never have to worry about another very high-risk pregnancy.
Hell, I’d made Sierra promise me that I’d never have to go through this experience again, and she’d happily agreed.
But…we had our amazing baby girl.
I hadn’t taken a breath in the operating room until I’d heard my baby cry. Hell, I’d wanted to shed a tear myself when I’d seen my wife take our girl into her arms briefly for the first time before my daughter had been hustled off to the NICU.
“All of this feels so damn surreal to me,” I told my brother as we got comfortable in two chairs in the empty waiting room.
Honestly, the last months had passed agonizingly slowly.
Sierra and I had married in the courthouse, with all of our family present, to minimize her stress.
Millie had organized a family dinner afterward with a cake, and my wife had declared that her wedding was absolutely perfect.
Personally, I hated the fact that Sierra hadn’t gotten the wedding I thought she deserved, but she’d seemed satisfied, and I’d been ecstatic when it was over.
My wife had needed to avoid the stress of a bigger affair, and that entire day was a happy one for me. She had, after all, become officially mine that day, but I’d been a little edgy about her overdoing anything during her pregnancy.
“It was worth all of the stress, right?” Cole asked.
“Yeah,” I replied immediately. “I can honestly say thatnow. But all of this could have turned out differently.”
