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I smile at him. “Good thing I love you, then.”
He kisses me. “Good thing I love you too.”
We stay tangled together on the couch, which is definitely going to need new cushions after tonight.
“I’m glad it happened with you,” he says after a while.
“The knot thing?”
“All of it.”
I smile.
All of it.
All of him.
Epilogue
Romy
Two and a half years later
I find Otis on his knees in the garden, covered in dirt, muttering at a rosebush like it personally wronged him.
“Hey, you,” I call from the porch.
He looks up and squints against the sun. Two years of marriage hasn’t done a single thing to dull the effect he has on me. If anything, watching him fuss over flowers makes it worse. He knows how much I love this rosebush and is determined to keep it alive now that I can’t tend to it myself.
“Morning, gorgeous,” he says with an adoring smile.
I make my way down the porch steps with one hand braced on my lower back. At seven months pregnant, my body doesn’t always cooperate.
The garden stretches out in front of me, and I sigh happily at the cottagecore vibes it gives off. It’s nothing like the bramble disaster I drove up to more than two years ago. Otis tore out every weed by hand, then spent the following summer building raised beds and planting trees. Now, dahlias have taken over one corner, the vegetable patch produces more tomatoes than two people and a toddler could possibly eat, and the trees provide a shady spot to sit.
And then there’s the rosebush he’s tending to so lovingly.
He abandons it when he sees me coming and gets to his feet, brushing dirt off his knees. “You shouldn’t be out here. Doctor said to rest.”
“The doctor said to take it easy, not that I have to become a houseplant.”
He crosses the distance between us and kisses me before resting a hand against my bump. “How’s she doing?”
“She’s been kicking my ribs since six a.m., so I’d say thriving.”
He smiles. “Thriving is good.”
Our first baby, Lou, is currently asleep inside, worn out from spending the entire morning chasing the cat we rescued last winter.
“Where’s our little monster?” he asks.
“Sleeping.”
“Still?”
“He had a busy morning.” I glance at the rosebush again. “Is it going to survive?”
“I wouldn’t let anything happen to your favorite plant, Romy.”
