Page 317 of Romeo

I smiled back.

The relief that moved through his expression made my throat tighten all over again.

Then Granny started toward me.

My flowers trembled.

I hadn’t noticed until her eyes dropped to them.

She stopped in front of me, and whatever strength I had managed to gather disappeared beneath the familiar warmth in her face.

“Oh, sweetheart.”

Tears spilled before I could stop them.

“I’m sorry.”

Granny’s expression changed instantly. “For what?”

“For leaving like that. For not waking you.” I glanced around at the flowers, the priest, Jasper’s family and mine crowded into a Bourbon Bar because apparently this was what my wedding looked like. “For almost doing this without you.”

Her hands came up and cupped my face, exactly as they had countless times since the day she brought me into her life. “There is nothing for you to apologize to me for.”

“I left you a note.”

“You left me two phones, a note, and enough reason to put an entire motorcycle club on an airplane before lunch.”

A laugh broke through my tears.

Granny wiped beneath my eye with her thumb. “I’m furious with him. That is entirely separate from you.”

Behind her, Jasper muttered, “Good to know.”

Glorianna smacked his arm.

He shut up.

Granny’s faint smile disappeared as she looked at me more closely. The hands holding my face gentled, and I knew what she was going to ask before she said it.

“Are you sure?”

I looked past her.

Jasper stood where I had left him, his mother beside him and C.C. on his other side. Gator was a few feet away. King still looked as though marriage wouldn’t prevent him from committing homicide later. Cameron had somehow acquired something to eat and was watching the entire thing as calmly as if he had arranged the day himself.

But Jasper wasn’t watching any of them.

He was watching me.

The man who had spent nearly a year waiting for me.

The man who stopped when I kissed him because he wanted me to be certain. The man who listened when I finally told him about Charlie and found something to love in the part of myself I had been most afraid to show him. The man who had asked me to become his wife and then stood in front of every person I loved without retreating when they demanded to know what the hell he thought he was doing.

The answer settled inside me with a familiarity I recognized.

There had only been one other time in my life when I had known something with that kind of certainty.

“Yes.”