Rhodes and I were so excited. So, so excited. Am was too. He’d put up one of the ultrasound pictures in his dorm room. Beside it, he had one of Azalia the day she’d been born. After all, he’d been the one to drive me to the hospital, and he’d hung out in the room with me looking green and letting me squeeze the shit out of his hand until Rhodes had shown up literally two minutes before I’d given birth. Amos had been the third person to hold his baby sister, and that, I’d guessed, explained their closeness perfectly.
We’d called him right after we’d left the doctor’s office, and he had let out a noise that made us both laugh. “Holy shit. We’re gonna be overrun with girls now, Dad.”
The man sitting in the car beside me, still holding my hand, had grinned forward through the windshield with bright eyes and said the best thing he could have ever come up with, “I’m not complaining.”
He meant every word of it too.
God knew I could never forget the way that Rhodes’s whole body had trembled after the doctor had confirmed that I was pregnant. How his eyes had filled with tears, how his mouth had pressed against my cheeks, forehead, nose, and even my chin after I’d given birth to Azalia. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner, father, or a better man than him to spend the rest of my life with. He lifted me up, believed in me, and filled my life with more love than I ever could have asked for.
“Are you good, angel?” Rhodes asked, running his palm up and down my upper arm warmly, saving the day like always.
Moving my gaze away from the people that I used to know—I had a feeling it would be the last time I would ever see them—I nodded at Rhodes. At my husband. The person who would go through heaven and hell to get to me if I was ever lost. The man who had given me every single thing I had ever wanted and more.
This one ceremony had been enough. I hadn’t missed out, not even a little bit. I was ready to go home. Ready to continue living my life with these people that I loved with my entire soul.
And it was as we were walking toward the elevators that Am snickered. “You know what I just thought about, Ora?”
I glanced at him. “No, tell me.”
“Hear me out. What would have happened if I wouldn’t have rented the garage apartment out to you? I almost chickened out. Would Dad have ever met you? Would I be going to school for music? Would you own the store?” he asked with a thoughtful expression. “You ever wonder?”
I didn’t have to think about it, so I told him the truth.
I told him that I had before, but it had been a long time since then.
Because I had ended up exactly where I should have, where every decision that had been made before me and made by me had led.
I was one of the lucky ones, I thought as a flicker of a thought brushed through my head; there so effortlessly, it stole my breath away. I grabbed Rhodes’s arm in shock, and he glanced down at me curiously, with so much love it was just one more thing to steal my breath away.
And the thought, the words, came to me again.
I found a place where I belong,
A place with love that feels like home again.
Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t exist in the first place without you—thank you so much to my incredible readers for your love and continued support.
An enormous thank you to the greatest designer in the world, Letitia at RBA Designs; my wonderful agents Jane Dystel and Lauren Abramo, and everyone at Dystel, Goderich and Bourret.
Judy, I can’t thank you enough for always answering all of my audio questions and for just being wonderful. Thank you to Virginia and Kim at Hot Tree Editing and Ellie with My Brother’s Editor for your editing skills. Kilian, thank you for all your help.
As always, Eva, I don’t know what I’d do without you and your memory. And your suggestions. And your GIFs.
To my friends who have helped me in some way （who I know I’m forgetting）： thank you for everything.
To my Zapata, Navarro, and Letchford family, you’re the greatest families a girl could ever ask for.
To Chris, Kai, and my forever editor and angel in the sky, Dorian: I love you guys so much.
About the Author
Mariana Zapata lives in a small town in Colorado with her husband and two oversized children—her beloved Great Danes, Dorian and Kaiser. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, spending time outside, forcing kisses on her boys, or pretending to write.