Life's Too Short (The Friend Zone #3)(91)

I sniffed. “And when one of them is my last?” I asked, looking at him.

“You’re my soul mate. I’ll find you in the next life. Like I found you in this one.”





EPILOGUE





THESE CELEBRITIES HAVE

FALLEN OFF THE MAP, SEE WHERE

THEY ARE NOW!


Ten months later



ADRIAN

Come on. Put your elbow around my neck.”

Vanessa pressed her lips into a line. She hated this. “I can do it myself.”

“No, you can’t.” I scooped her into my arms. “You’re not strong enough. You’ll fall and hurt yourself. Besides, you let Drake do it on that mountain in Venezuela.” I smiled, carrying her to the living room of my—our—apartment and setting her on the couch.

I tucked her throw blanket around her and kissed her forehead. “There. Was that so bad?”

She crossed her arms defiantly. Grace had started to do this too. I was outnumbered, two to one.

Grace stood at my feet, opening and closing her little fists. “Dada.”

I picked up our daughter. “Do you see how stubborn Mommy is?” I said, tickling her tummy, and she giggled, little blond curls bouncing.

“I am not stubborn,” Vanessa huffed, trying not to let me see her smile.

“Don’t even get me started with you,” I said, grinning. “You could have had this done months ago and you wouldn’t have nerve damage in your hand.”

The issue hadn’t been ALS.

Six months after I’d come to find her at Drake’s, Vanessa was still struggling with tingling fingers and weakness—but it never progressed past her arm. She’d finally agreed to some doctor’s visits and they found a benign cyst had been pressing on a nerve. She’d just had it removed this morning. It was an outpatient procedure and she was still loopy from the anesthesia.

Since she hadn’t been using her hand, she’d lost muscle tone in her arm, but a little physical therapy and she’d get that back.

She got a lot of things back when she got this diagnosis.

She was thirty now. She’d officially outlived her grandmother, her aunt, her mom, and her older sister.

That didn’t mean we were out of the woods. We’d never be out of the woods. ALS could always strike, at any time. She would always be a potential carrier of the gene. But every day that passed without the onset of symptoms, we felt more hopeful. And every day that passed we treated like a gift.

It was Christmas Eve tomorrow. We were home for the holidays—among other things. Namely her surgery, her birthday, and the big one—our wedding.

Our apartment was decorated for the holiday. The tree was up. Vanessa’s artwork hung on our walls, plus a few new pieces we’d picked up on our travels. Our bedroom ceiling had glow-in-the-dark stars and our junk drawer was chaos. My office had been turned into a nursery—not that we were here very often to use it. At the age of one year old, Grace had visited more countries than most people do in their lifetime.

I grabbed my laptop and settled on the couch next to my wife.

She peered up at me as I attached a file to an email to Malcolm. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked. “There’s a lot of private stuff in there.”

I leaned in and kissed her. “I’m sure.”

Our entire life was in this file. Videos of the last ten months. Our emotional first week back together, reconnecting on Drake’s island. Our trip to India, our cruise on the Baltic Sea, me kissing her in front of the Eiffel Tower. Grace saying mama for the first time, Grace saying dada for the first time. An emotional freak out by Vanessa at a resort in Hawaii after she couldn’t paddle board with her bad arm. I’d calmed her down and kept her still. Bushwhacking in Colombia, slow dancing on a promenade in Rio de Janeiro, Grace’s first steps. Back to the United States to see Mom and Grandma and Richard. Thanksgiving with Gerald and Annabel and Brent. Then my surprise wedding proposal in the hallway of our apartment building on the one-year anniversary of the day we met. Our engagement photo, our feet with a chalkboard between us with SHE SAID YES (TO TAPAS).

We made the last video in the series last week. It was our wedding, on Vanessa’s thirtieth birthday, a private affair at the Sunken Garden in Como Park in St. Paul.

Drake had officiated—he even put on a shirt for the occasion. My cousin Josh was my best man, and Gerald gave her away.

Vanessa’s dad was doing well. Staying in therapy, holding down his job, and keeping the house clean. Vanessa was really proud of him.

Brent and Joel were engaged. BoobStick was a huge success—as we knew it would be. It helped to fund most of our travels.

Annabel…

She left rehab early and relapsed. She had a hard couple of months after that. When she eventually returned to treatment, she was finally ready to get clean. She’d been sober since May and she was doing really well, working for Brent doing graphic design and taking classes online. She Skyped with Grace now and then and had spent lots of time with her since we’d been back in town.

We’d decided that we’d tell Grace about her birth parents as soon as she was old enough to understand, but Annabel made it clear she only wanted to be an aunt. So even though our daughter would always know the truth about where she came from, Vanessa would always be Grace’s mommy.