Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 77793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
“It’s Ginger now,” she says with a cackle. “I get a badass name now too.”
“Ginger…I like it!”
“One tray of liver tarts coming right up!” Ginger says exuberantly.
After Ginger and Granny leave for the kitchen together—Granny to probably try and talk Ginger into making something else—I raise a brow in Echo’s direction. “Liver, huh?”
She shrugs and gives me a sheepish smile. “I’ll eat just about anything right now because I’m so happy to have you all here with me. I’m so happy to be here. To be back.” She takes my hand again, a little shyly. “To be with you. I’m sorry I tried to make this not happen.” She smiles at the end, and her smile makes me feel like I can float up to the ceiling like a helium balloon.
I can’t help kissing her again. There are cheers all over again because my family never gets tired of cheering each other on. Someone is even giving us a slow clap, which feels like a bit much, but you know what? It’s okay. I know we all still have things we’ll worry about—tough things. Life is never easy, but we’ll all face it together. All of us. There’s Granny and Ginger and maybe even the mystery man we still have yet to meet and give an extremely hard time to because there’s no way he’s good enough for our granny, Lennox and Cass, Alden and Azalea, Ransom and Ayana and Maya, plus the new addition we have yet to meet, Atlas and Victoria and the raccoons that keep cropping up around them, and now, Echo and myself.
We might not have started this life as a family, but we ended up here together, and that’s what counts. That’s absolutely what counts.
EPILOGUE
Echo
“It’s kind of hard to believe we’re getting married tomorrow.”
“Remarried,” Orion corrects me. He raises his hand in the air and threads his fingers through mine so we’re holding hands above our heads as we lie on our backs and stare at the roof of the treehouse.
“And we’re going to do it here, where we met when both of us were sober and could remember.”
He turns to me, his eyes twinkling like the stars above us that we can’t see right now, even though they’re out there. I just climbed up here a few hours ago after the celebration at the house, and they were going strong up there, sparkling and magical in the black velvet horizon.
“It was still for rent, so of course, Granny was going to make sure we got it. When we said we wanted to get married for real this time, she was on the computer checking for dates as soon as the words were out of our mouths,” Orion says.
I giggle. “She was probably congratulating us in one breath and hustling off to her laptop in the next.”
“She probably was telling us congratulations and scrolling on her phone at the exact same moment.”
“Ha! Yes, probably,” I reply with a laugh.
“Can you believe it’s been three years?” Orion asks.
“Three years, four months, and ten days. Yes, I do know.” I tap my head. “It’s the kind of almost photographic memory I have going on. It remembers dates really well and does math even better.”
“I love your brain. Your brain is sexy,” Orion mutters lovingly.
I clasp Orion’s hand tighter as my heart throbs with delight, and utter happiness takes over the happiness that was making me feel like I could float up to the stars a few seconds ago. It’s always like that. When I feel like I couldn’t be happier, it happens. And it’s awesome. So, so awesome.
“Your everything is sexy. I love your everything,” I say in return.
“Ditto. Which means I love your everything everything. And that I love love you.”
I always hear how people drive each other crazy when they’re in relationships, how they can’t stand being around each other all the time, how they could never work and live together, and how there is always something the other person is doing that is drives them that final bit bananas. But there isn’t one single thing I can think of that Orion does that I don’t love. I mean, yes, I do get annoyed. We get annoyed with each other, but it’s never like how other people talk about it. Maybe it’ll happen in the future when we get remarried since I heard marriage ruins everything.
Though I have to say I don’t believe it.
I’m very doubtful that anything can wreck our happiness because it’s built on a solid foundation. We know how to talk to each other, we know how to make ourselves okay so we can be there for each other, or at least it’s something we’re always learning and working on, and we have a huge family who loves and supports us. I’m perfectly happy working and living with the man I love, and no, it doesn’t make me hate the way he chews or the little habits that make him who he is. He never gets so annoying that I want to pull my hair out.