It was akin to stepping off a cliff, but that didn’t matter, because Gray was right there, her wings before she needed them.
He caught her chin, angling her face to his. “I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to think about the past now.”
“Right. The future,” he nodded, dropping his forehead to hers and inhaling, as though he needed to breathe her in.
“Yes, the future.” Her heart was in her throat. “Together.”
For three months,they dated. It started slowly – just two nights a week. Gray would go to Abby’s in the afternoon and spend some time with Charlotte, playing with her, reading to her, then bathing her and helping to settle the little girl to sleep. Sometime around seven, Angie would arrive and give Gray some more of her inquisition, then consent to allow the couple to leave. And they’d walk, and talk, and finally settle on a small, unassuming restaurant in which to grab a bite. Sometimes they’d just order take out and share it at Abby’s kitchen counter, or on the sofa while watching a movie.
But after a month or so, Gray started to come over more often, sometimes with bags of groceries so he could cook dinner, other times with take out, other times with Jacinda ready to mind Charlotte rather than inconveniencing Angie. Then, there were the times when he’d simply call from his limo downstairs, and whisk them away to the airport where his jet was waiting and fly them somewhere special for dinner, or to see the sunset over Niagara falls, anything wonderful Gray had experienced in his life, he was bursting to experience again, but with Abby and Charlotte by his side.
After a few months, Gray was spending almost every night at Abby’s – a fact they hadn’t realized until, one morning, while Charlotte was playing with her trains, she held a piece of the train towards Gray and said, clear as anything, “Dada do.”
Gray froze, turned to Abby, wondering if he’d misheard, but the look of warmth on Abby’s face showed him that Charlotte had indeed recognized him as Dada.
“I don’t know why she said that,” he muttered, later, when Charlotte was occupied.
“She’s a smart kid.”
“I didn’t train her or anything.”
“Gray,” Abby laughed gently. “Youareher dad. What are you worrying about?”
And he grinned then, because the truth was, he wasn’t worried about anything. He loved being a father, and he wanted to become a father again. And again. As many times as Abby could handle being pregnant. He wanted to make a basketball team with her. He’d run from the idea of love for so long but it turned out, he had so very much of it to give.
Six months after Gray turned up at Abby’s apartment in the middle of the night, Charlotte and Abby moved in with him, but this time, with some subtle changes. Abby didn’t step foot in the room she’d occupied before. Her place was with Gray. They shared his room, his bed – just as she shared his heart. And this time, they came to an arrangement with Angie and Jacinda, so that Abby could have help in order to study, and Charlotte would have some consistency. Besides, Gray wanted to work on baby number two, so being able to jet off with Abby at a moment’s notice, taking her to Paris or London or Florence or Hawaii for a romantic rendezvous was made much easier with their team of dedicated nannies.
But Gray and Abby remained committed, hands-on parents. They were happiest of all when they were together, just the three of them: a family.
He didn’t havethe nightmares anymore, but he still started seeing a therapist. He wanted to be the best version of himself for Abby and Charlotte, and he was sick of the demons that rode alongside him. After a few weeks, he found it hard to understand why he’d resisted seeking professional help for so long, and began to donate heavily to military support charities, to create better funding and more opportunities for people like him to access help to reintegrate into their old lives, to face their new lives, without the fear that had dogged him for so long.
A monthafter Abby and Charlotte had moved back to the apartment, Gray came home from work – early, as he always did, now – to find Abby wearing her engagement ring.
“Oh, I found it when I was cleaning out my old wardrobe.”
“Yeah, I put it there when you left. I didn’t know what to do with it, and somehow, keeping it with the rest of your things made it feel like you might come back.”
“Kind of an expensive piece to just push into a wardrobe and forget about,” she teased, wrinkling her nose as she studied the enormous diamond.
“Abby, when I gave you that ring, I promised you –,”
“I remember.” Her throat was thick.
“I want to promise you so much more. I will love you, Abigail Brenna, for the rest of my life. Does this mean you’re ready to marry me?”
She made a noise that was half sob and half laugh and then nodded, pushing forward to kiss the love of her life, and her future husband – a man who had not only told her he loved her, but shown her, again and again, in all the ways she most needed.
It tookAbby and Max three months to organize the details, so almost exactly a year after running into one another at the event Abby was waitressing, they were married from the beach in the Hamptons. Amelia and Charlotte served as flower girls, chattering as they walked along the sand, strewing rose petals and babbling about goodness only knows what. Max and Angie stood beside Abby, and Gray was flanked by Noah and Ashton, two of his closest friends. It was small wedding, kept secret from the prying eyes of the press. Just their closest friends, family, and exceptional catering from Chantelle, Abby’s former employer. Abby loved meeting people from Gray’s life, and particularly enjoyed getting to know a friend of his – a partner in one of their businesses. Matthieu de Garmeaux was six and a half feet tall, drop dead gorgeous, and amused Abby with the story of his old-fashioned family, and the requirement they had for him to arrive at the family chateaux, just out of Paris, with a fiancé before Christmas – or else he’d be disinherited. “The money I don’t much care about, I have my own of that,” he said in an accent that was husky British, with a hint of French around the consonants. “But they have threatened to ban me from seeing my grandfather, whom I adore.”
“So you’ll get married just to keep him happy?”
“Engaged, at least.” He winked. “I do not really wish to get married.”
“Ah, I see. Another cynic,” Abby teased, leaning in closer to her husband.
“All cynics can be converted to believers – it just takes the right woman.” Gray kissed the top of Abby’s head and thought how lucky he was, how close he came to missing out on the life he was born to lead.