“So what does that mean?” he asked.
“It means fuck being afraid. I’m tired of it. I love you, Declan. Love me back and let’s get over this. Maybe it won’t be easy. There will be days it will be hard. There will be days where I don’t know if I can get out of bed, or days where I will resent your mother. But I will never resent you, Declan. And I hope you can do the same. Just love me. At the end of the day, there’s nothing else. We end up as ashes under a tree. Specks on the earth that’s just a speck in the universe. And I need to be that speck next to you, baby. I can’t go on anymore without that. I don’t want to end up like your mother-devastated and regretting all the things I should have done right. Let’s start making it right.”
Declan wasn’t one to cry. But after that speech, it was almost impossible not to.
“Charlotte,” he said. “I’m yours forever. I always was.”
“I know that,” she smiled through her tears. “Now let’s start living in that forever.”
Chapter Nineteen
Henry DeGraff passed away five days later. Declan and Charlotte were both by his side.
He’d been asleep for almost two days by then, doped up on narcotics, waiting for his body to finally give up. In the days before that he’d made his peace with Declan. And with Charlotte.
“I’m sorry I didn’t let you in,” Henry had told her. “I hid behind a lot of things. I thought the wrong kind of things were important. It’s a damn shame you don’t know that until it’s over.”
“It’s okay,” Charlotte said. “I hold no hard feelings. I never did. Honestly, I was in awe of you. What a presence you are, Henry.”
“And what a beautiful girl you are. You could do so much better than Declan,” he said and both Charlotte and Declan laughed.
“She hasn’t figured that out yet, Dad,” Declan said.
“I hope she never does.”
********
They scattered his ashes at midnight a few days later. Declan didn’t cry but Charlotte did. Not just for Henry. But for her mother. For Anna. For Melanie Hopp.
The losses made it hard to want to keep living, to keep loving. But that was the cost, Charlotte supposed. The pain of losing people was the price we paid for loving them at all.
As she watched Declan scatter his father’s ashes under a full moon, she couldn’t help but be grateful that if the pain was inevitable, she would be thankful it was Declan she got to feel it for.
********
They made love the next morning, right as the sun was peeking through the blinds of the carriage house. They were both craving the past, so they’d slept there that night. Waking up with him in her old bed gave her such contentment.
His thrusting was slow at first and she’d kissed his face as he went in and out of her. His cheeks, his mouth, his eyelids. She arched her back to come for him, to let him know what he was doing for her body.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I love you. You feel so good.”
He said nothing, just kissed her mouth long and hard as he released himself inside of her. She cried out afterwards and he withdrew and replaced his cock with his hand, rubbing her clit until she had finished again.
“I love you,” he said. “Thank you.”
“For what?” she asked. She was laying on his chest now, listening to his heartbeat slow from rapid to normal.
“For giving me another chance,” he said. “For being here through what happened to my dad. For everything. For existing in the first place.”
She grinned, “That’s a lot.”
“I could never say all the things I’m thankful for when it comes to you,” he said, taking her hand and bringing it to his mouth. “You’re my moon. Remember?”
“I do,” she said.
“Would you like to be something else too?” he asked.
“Maybe,” she replied. “What’s that?”
“My wife,” he grinned. “I used to always tell myself when I asked you, it would be here.”
Her heart jumped in her chest. She hadn’t expected it, but now that he’d said it, it was all she wanted in the world.
“Yes,” she said, tears falling down her face. “I want that more than anything.”
“I know I didn’t get down on one knee,” he said. “And I don’t have a ring. But we’re billionaires. I’ll fly you to Lorraine Schwartz herself and you pick out the biggest diamond in the world, and it’s yours. Literally, Charlotte. The biggest one any woman has ever received from her future husband.”
“We’re billionaires?” Charlotte laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“What’s mine is yours,” he grinned. “Isn’t that how it works?”
“I have no idea,” she laughed. “But I like the sound of it. And I’m not talking about the money. I just want your soul, Declan DeGraff. That’s all.”
“Well, that’s been yours since the beginning of time,” he said, kissing her softly on the lips. “And it’s yours til the end of it.”
Epilogue
A few months later… Christmas