Page 265 of Wait for Him

Rose makes a small sound beside me, and I wrap my arm tighter around her without taking my eyes off James. His are wet now too, but he keeps going.

“Then I met her, and I got all those answers. And Ma, I need you to know something because I don’t think I’ve ever actually said it like this.”

Rose shakes her head slightly, already crying too hard to give him much of an answer.

“You didn’t leave a hole in my life when you gave me to Mom and Dad. They made sure of that. You gave me exactly what you wanted me to have.”

Lauren bows her head against Samson’s shoulder, and Rose’s hand clamps around mine hard enough that I’m probably losing circulation. I don’t move it.

“But when I found you, I found a piece of myself I didn’t know where to put before.”

James smiles through his tears, looking directly at Rose.

“And it turns out that piece was you-shaped.” He wipes quickly beneath one eye, then glances at me. “And I think maybe the same thing happened to you today. Except your piece was Jackson-shaped.”

Rose lets out a broken laugh and immediately covers her face with her free hand. “Goddammit, James.”

“Sorry, Ma.”

“No, you're not.”

“No. I'm really not.”

The room laughs with them, although half the people in it are crying too, and James smiles like he knows damn well what he just did.

“And before anybody gets mad at me, I don't mean Jackson fixed her or saved her or any of that shit. Ma would've kicked his ass if he tried.”

“Correct,” Rose calls out through her tears.

“I know.” James smiles. “What I mean is, I think you recognized something in him. The same way I recognized something in you. Something that was already yours. You didn't need Jackson to become whole. You were already you. But I think there was always a place in your life that belonged to him, even when he wasn't there. You were just…waiting for him.”

I look down at Rose, and she's already gazing up at me.

James keeps talking, but I lose a few seconds of it because the kid has decided his best man's speech is the appropriate time to explain my entire fucking life back to me.

And annoyingly, he might be right.

Maybe that's why everything after Rose always felt temporary, even when I was trying like hell to convince myself it wasn't. Why I could build whole relationships with other women and still have some part of my brain comparing them to her. Why seeing Rose again after a year didn't feel like starting over with somebody I'd lost.

It just felt like Rose.

Which is probably the least sophisticated way anyone has ever reached an emotional breakthrough, but there it is.

Rose brings our joined hands to her mouth and kisses my knuckles. “I love you,” she whispers.

I lean down and kiss her temple. “Love you too, wife.”

Her smile trembles, and before either of us can disappear any further into our own little world, James clears his throat loudly into the microphone.

“I'm still talking.”

Rose laughs against my chest. “Sorry, baby,” she calls out.

“Thank you.” He looks back at his notes. “Now, if everyone could stop having private romantic moments during the speech I spent three weeks writing, I'd like to finish before the cake gets stale.”

That gets another laugh from the room, and I sit back with Rose tucked against me, because getting roasted by my own best man is just another perk of fatherhood.

Rose