Page 280 of The Wright Man

I was grabbing his face, kissing him like the world had ended and started over in the same second.

He laughed against my lips, and I felt the sound echo in my ribs.

We were both crying and laughing and trying to kiss and breathe and be all at once. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him like I was sealing a vow that had started the moment we met.

When he slid the ring onto my finger, it glowed under the fairy lights like it belonged there. Like it had always been mine.

He held my face in his hands, kissing my forehead, my cheeks, my lips. His thumbs moved slow across my jaw the way they always did when he was trying to hold something too big for words.

I looked down at the ring, then back at him—my best friend, my protector, my person, and in that moment, I felt nothing but peace.

We sat together under the glow of the gazebo, wrapped in each other, Monica's voice humming soft in the background.

And I just let it all wash over me.

Not the version of him I used to fantasize about when I was fifteen and stupid in love—but the real man. The one who carried my joy and my pain. The one who'd been by my side when everything else fell apart. The one who built with me, dreamed with me, grew with me.

I took the long way to get here, but I was finally, irrevocably, exactly where I was meant to be.

With the right man.

With my man.

And this? This wasn't the end. This was just the beginning.