"Is it...?”
"Yeah, it is," I murmur to her. I open the box, show her the ring, watch the way her eyes light up – I can see the love there, and I know what she is going to say before she so much as opens her mouth.
"I know it’s only been a couple of months since we met," I tell her, cupping her chin in my hand as I talk. "But I’m not willing to wait any longer to call you my wife. I know that you’re the one, Ellie. You have been from the moment I saw you. And I want to make it official. Will you... will you marry me?”
She closes her eyes for a moment, her lips turning upward into a smile, as though she just wants to live in this moment for a little while longer before she tells me her answer. And when she meets my gaze again, I can see it written all over her face.
"Of course I will," she tells me.
I smile as I lean over to kiss her. This is everything that I need – everything that I want. I love this woman, more than I know how to tell her. And the best that I can come up with right now is to tell her, without any doubt in my mind, that I want to spend the rest of my life with her – that I want to be her family, her forever. I want to give her everything that she has been missing.
"I love you," I whisper as I slide the ring on her finger. It’s the first time I’ve said those words with her right in front of me, and getting to see the way her whole body softens at the sound of them is everything that I thought it would be.
"I love you, too," she whispers back, before kissing me again.
And, even though I know that I am meant to be heading back to set soon, when she takes my lapels and pulls me down on top of her on the couch, I know that they are going to have to be patient. Because I want to celebrate with the woman who has just agreed to spend the rest of her life with me. And I know that, right now, everything else can wait while I show her just why she made the right choice in saying yes.
Epilogue 2
Ellie
One year later…
I smooth down my dress in front of the mirror, cupping the fabric over my bump, hardly able to keep the smile off of my face at the sight of it.
Hard to believe that it’s only going to be a couple of weeks until I get to meet our baby boy in person for the first time. It feels as though it’s been a lifetime since the day that I first found out that I was pregnant – the very day that Ethan finished shooting the movie that we’re going to the premiere for tonight, actually.
Normally, he would have just told me to stay home and get some rest, but I feel like it’s fate that my due date comes so close to this release. It just feels right to go out there, to see all the locations again, to remember how happy we were when we spent those few weeks out in Germany. Even after his film finished shooting, we travelled for a little while together, in between my classes, and I swear that country has my whole heart now.
Well, the parts of it that don’t belong to Ethan, of course. My movie star, my other half, the love of my life. I know that he is everything that I have been waiting for – when I came to L.A., I was trying to escape from the weight of what I had lost back home. But instead of fleeing, I had run into something, into someone who has made everything so much better. Someone who has given me the family that I had longed for.
Not just him, not just our baby, but his sister and her family, too. I feel like I have a real home now, not just the beautiful mansion that Ethan and I picked out together, but something solid, ground under my feet. I am surrounded by love, by people who love me, and I had forgotten how good it felt to have that sureness everywhere I went.
"You look beautiful."
I turn, and find Ethan standing in the doorway, looking like a full-blown hottie in his suit and his tie. He comes over to me and plants a kiss on the back of my neck, running his hand around my waist and putting it on my stomach.
"You think?" I ask. "Not too... huge?"
"Nothing like it," he assures me. "You look so stunning."
"Thanks.” I tilt my head up to plant a kiss on his lips. I know that we have to leave soon, but honestly, if he were to just suggest staying at home and ordering takeout, I doubt that I would have argued with him.