Epilogue
“Oh, Ella, you look so lovely!”
I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled down at her, and she beamed back up at me. She was wearing her favorite dress and clutching a bouquet of flowers she’d picked out specially for the occasion—a beautiful, bright mix, just like her.
“So do you!” she replied, and tried to wrap her arms around me, but I was getting too big for that now. She stopped short with her head pressed into my belly, and I had to gently peel her off.
“Hey, hey, careful now.” I shooed her away. “You don’t want to hurt your little sister!”
“I can’t wait to meet her,” she said excitedly. Ever since we had broken the news of the baby to Ella a few months ago, she had been planning for her sister’s birth—drawing pictures, making models, and picking out the toys that she would hand down. It was a relief to see—we had been worried she wouldn’t take it so well, what with the news of the wedding on top of that, but she had thrown herself into everything, happy to be part of a fully-fledged family unit again.
I couldn’t believe that the wedding was already here; Jazz and I had agreed to get married a month or so after the whole Ian thing was put to bed, and it had seemed so far in the future then. But here we were, about to walk down the aisle already. I guess with all the baby planning and the wedding planning and everything else, the time had just slipped away from us.
Doubly so because we were dealing with assisting the police along with everything else. I didn’t mind, because it meant that we could put Ian behind bars—but I had never realized just how much bureaucracy went into cases like this one. I had assumed that since he had been arrested on the scene, identified by multiple people, and that there was heaps of evidence against him, it would be easy to get a conviction—but apparently I had been wrong. It seemed like we were in and out of the station constantly, giving statements, clarifying them, giving them again to make sure that we weren’t colluding with anyone else.
It was worst for Ella, who had to relive the details of her kidnapping, but we found a great child therapist for her to visit who made it all easier for her to get through. Jazz was initially against the idea, but in my line of work, I knew that this sort of stuff could come back to haunt kids later in life if you didn’t take the opportunity to deal with it there and then. I knew she would always suffer for what that monster had done to her—and make no mistake, that filled me with the kind of burning rage that a prison sentence could never satisfactorily address—but we would help her through it. Having the wedding and the baby to plan for seemed to give her something to focus on, which was a relief—even if it meant working her opinion into every little detail, which was endearing but often exhausting.
Well, not to mention the fact that even aside from my personal life, this had been the busiest few months of my entire life. I had gone back to work as a social worker, doing more office-based stuff now; after what happened with Ian, I needed time to get back on my feet before going into the field. It was funny, though, because my colleagues seemed to treat me with this bizarre kind of awe—I’d been part of one of the most high-profile child abduction cases the city had ever seen, and I’d been a part of getting the kid back safe and sound. When it came to that, I seemed to have earned an almost automatic bounty of respect from everyone around me, which was satisfying, and made my job a hell of a lot easier.
I had stepped up into what used to be Amanda’s position after she retired—she had recommended me specifically, which I was ridiculously flattered by. So I mentored and supported the new social workers and did my best to give them the start Amanda gave me. It wasn’t what I’d seen myself doing, but I loved it—and the office hours gave me plenty of time to spend at home with Ella, as well. I could get back to a home-cooked dinner from Jazz, and the three of us would eat together and discuss our days before Jazz took off to his Marauders meetings in the evening.
He had grappled for a long time about what he was going to do about the Marauders. I knew he felt guilty for still being involved with them, what with having Ella and the new baby on the way—but it was a decent source of income for us, and we didn’t want to give that up. Besides, he was good at it, and almost all of his friends he knew through the club. And now that I had moved in permanently, he didn’t have to worry about hiring a babysitter anymore. He would go out every weeknight to the club to get things in order, and then we would spend the weekends together as a family.
He lavished attention on Ella and I: days out, meals in the city, trips wherever she wanted to go. I always knew that this Jazz was in there somewhere, that the pained man I had lived with for a while was thanks to the horrendous stress of the situation we were all under. He was electric, alight, and I had never been in love with someone the way I was in love with him. It was that simple; he made me feel safe at the same time that he made me feel alive. I had never been able to find a man who could do both, but here he was. I had never pictured myself with a man like Jazz, never thought that I would fall for the head of a motorcycle club, never thought I’d marry a single dad—but I didn’t care. When it was right, it was right, and there was no denying that this was so, so right.
“Hey,” a voice came from behind me, pulling me from my little romantic segue. “Are you almost ready? That’s pretty much everyone in the church now.”
I turned, and found myself looking at Lucy. She was, of course, my maid of honor—who else? She looked awesome, in a knee-length teal tea dress with her hair piled on top of her head.
“I’m ready.” I nodded. I hadn’t been that sold on the idea of a church wedding, but Jazz’s family had insisted and I had no intention of causing waves where I didn’t have to. Everything else had been by my book, though—I had picked the dresses, the flowers, the food, and tried to make it all as laidback as possible. The only thing I went all-out on was the cake, which Ella helped me pick out, because, well, cake.
“You look amazing,” she remarked, looking me up and down and grinning. I knew she wasn’t the type of woman who’d tell me that if she didn’t mean it, and I was touched by her compliment. From her, it meant something.
“Not so bad yourself,” I shot back, gesturing at her dress. “Declan won’t be able to keep his hands off of you.”
Declan and Lucy had, in the grand tradition of great wedding clichés, ended up dating a few months previously. I had seen the spark of a connection the very first night they encountered each other, despite the circumstances, and when Jazz picked him as his best man, I knew that he was partially doing it to set the two of them up. It worked—they seemed deliriously happy together, Lucy’s no-nonsense attitude blending perfectly with Declan’s playful demeanor. I could see them going all the way, and I knew Lucy felt the same way too—even if she never would have admitted something so romantic without a few glasses of wine in her.
“Oh, I know, he’s already let me know that.” She flashed me a smile and I raised my eyebrows.
“Lucy Anderson, you flirt,” I teased. I felt a flutter of nervousness in my chest as I smoothed down my dress and looked in the mirror—this was it. I was more worried about having everyone looking at me than I was about getting married; it would be just typical for me to fall over and break my nose in a church full of my friends and family and have that be all anyone remembered about the day.
The dress had been my mother’s, and she had been just as unconventional as I was when she got married—and just as pregnant, too. As soon as I had seen it hanging in her cupboard, I knew I’d found the dress. It was a pale lavender with thick straps and a sweetheart neckline, landing in a floaty hem around my knees. I loved the way it made me look, but I loved the way it made me feel more—romantic and loved and hopeful. She had cried a little the first time she saw me in it, and I felt the same way. She had taken the news of Jazz, the pregnancy, and the engagement pretty well—Dad had taken some convincing, but he came around once he actually met my future husband.
“I might be, but you’re about to be someone’s wife,” Lucy reminded me. “Shall we get out there? I think it’s time to get this show on the road.”
“Yeah, I guess we should.” My heart up-ticked slightly in my chest, but it wasn’t nerves—it was excitement. I was looking forward to being his wife. To being Ella’s mother. All of this just felt so obvious that I couldn’t believe it wasn’t already over with yet.
“Come on.” Lucy linked her arm through mine and led me to the door of the little dressing room that hid in the space above the church—a narrow set of stairs led us down to where we needed to be.
I paused outside the door, and glanced at Lucy again.
“Do I look alright?” I whispered hurriedly, patting at my hair.
She brushed my hand away and nodded. “Gorgeous. Now, come on, you’ve got a wedding to go to.”
I opened the door, and the organ started up as though surprised by my entrance; everyone turned around with a great rustling of clothes and ripple of whispers as I entered, and I felt myself flush red. Okay, now don’t fall. Don’t. Fall. Ella darted out in front of me and bounced up the aisle, distracting attention from my careful footsteps.
I scanned the crowd—there was Mom and Dad, and Jazz’s family. Scott was there, too—and he had brought along Elijah, who had woken up from his coma a few weeks after Ian was arrested. He still had some memory problems, but he was doing great overall—and if I wasn’t much mistaken, I was pretty sure that I could see him and Scott holding hands. I knew it! I knew Scott had always had a crush on his old mentor, and I liked nothing more than being proved right.
Before I had a chance to think anything more of it, I found myself at the head of the aisle. I blinked and turned to Jazz, dressed in a slightly rumpled suit and looking gorgeous. He smiled at me broadly. He raised his eyebrows as if to say “so, here we are.” I stared back at him—was this really what I wanted? But it wasn’t doubt—I never doubted him. It was just my mind double-checking, making sure that I could see a life with him. And, honestly, I couldn’t see a life without him.
Declan and Lucy exchanged a flirtatious glance, and Jazz and I raised our eyebrows at each other upon noticing. I almost burst out laughing there and then at the obliviousness of the rest of the people in the church, but I bit the insides of my cheeks and kept it together—I knew I was just letting the nerves get to me.
“Shall I begin?” the minister asked, looking slightly pissed off at our antics. Jazz turned to him with a nod.
And that was it—the beginning. Finally, after all this time, we were at the start of everything. And it felt better than I ever could have imagined.
THE END
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