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Grace
I held Luke’s face between the palm of my hands and he leaned down to kiss my lips. “Are you happy?” he asked.
“The happiest I’ve ever been.” I smiled and kissed him back.
We were on the dance floor at our reception, and he pulled me closer to him. I rested my cheek on his chest and sighed in contentment. As I glanced across the room at the white linens and chairs, and the red roses that dripped from every corner of the room, I still couldn’t believe this was real.
Shortly after getting together, I moved into Luke’s home. It was a huge step, but both of us were tired of packing overnight bags.
Luke asked me if I wanted to use the study as my office but I told him I wasn’t planning to work late anymore, but sometimes I would sit there and read if he had to work late with a new restaurant owner. His business took off this past year and he had to hire an entire team. He kept an office at Crawford Corporation so he saw his brothers often. Although he outwardly complained about it, I knew he wouldn’t have it any other way.
As for me, my career at Chatters catapulted. Luke brought his company to our firm and a few months later, Colton did the same with Crawford Corporation. Harriet couldn’t believe it and she quickly made me a partner after that. I was still trying to bring Omar over to us, but he said he was enjoying the drama at Delmar & Tuch right now. Maybe later.
Mr. Fromer tried to coax me back, saying he’d make me a partner, but there was no way I’d ever go back there. They didn’t want me; they wanted my connections. But I knew my worth now. Good riddance.
Yet despite all these milestones, the most incredible, life-altering change in my life this past year was my mother’s health.
She received her kidney transplant, and after a couple of months of rehab, she moved in with Luke and me. Although, ‘moved in’ was misleading because Luke had built her a guest house with a full-time nurse and housekeeper. She didn’t even protest the extravagance. She was so happy and so was I.
I hadn’t realized how much my mother’s health had weighed on me. I’d been carrying the weight by myself for so long that I couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t staring at her anxiously, wondering if she was overtiring herself or worrying if she could make it across our tiny apartment on her own.
Now, she laughed and swayed side to side with Omar on the dance floor. She wore a long red dress to match the roses in my bouquet and her hair was twisted up into a chignon. She laughed at something Omar said and threw her head back.
She looks beautiful.
Tears pooled in my eyes, and I stared at the ceiling, hoping they would go away.
As Luke rubbed my back, I thought about how I used to perceive the world, and in particular, Luke. When he had shut me out of his life, I’d thought of him as a spoiled boy who cared little for me or my feelings. I’d taken my pain and turned it into anger.
I didn’t let others get close to me, telling myself I didn’t have time because of my mother, but that wasn’t the whole truth of it. The truth was that I’d been afraid to fall in love again and get hurt; afraid I would do something wrong and turn people away from me. So, I kept my distance.
Leonardo da Vinci once said, “All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.”
I thought I knew the kind of person Luke was but I knew nothing. I thought working hard meant I deserved more than others. All of that was wrong. I wasn’t happy about pushing people away. I was only happy when I understood where they came from.
Until I saw Luke, not only with my eyes but listened with my ears and heart, I never really understood him. If work hadn’t forced us together and I hadn’t learned of Luke’s past, I would have only seen what my eyes wanted me to see and never the truth behind my perceptions.
I stared into his eyes, the same green eyes that had captured my attention all those years ago, and saw what I’d always been too blind to see. My future, my strength, my love staring back at me.
epilogue
Grace
Omar leaned over my shoulder, a bag of popcorn in his hand. The buttery smell made my stomach growl. “You’re not working, are you?” he asked.
I smiled. “No. I’m just editing a picture I took of the baseball diamond.” I showed him my phone. “What do you think?”
He sat down beside me and offered me some popcorn. I happily took a handful.
“Looks good. I like how you even got Luke and his brothers into the shot.”
My smile widened as I took another look at the picture. I adjusted the lighting to bring out the pink hues of the setting sun in the background.
Turning my attention back onto the field, I looked for Luke again. He stood leaning on a bat outside of his team’s bench, next to his brothers and Richard. He had convinced them to start a private men’s league among their friends and business associates. They rented the field weekly for their games.
“Looks like Luke’s up to the plate,” said Omar, munching on his popcorn.
I clapped my hands and whooped in my seat, along with the other fifty or so spectators on the metal bleachers. The weather was cooling and a brisk wind whipped up my hair that had grown nearly to my shoulders.
