I smiled. “Yep.”
“How does it feel to be someone’s mommy?”
“Beautiful. Scary,” I answered honestly.
“Hold on to that feeling because it doesn’t really change as the days go by.” He chuckled softly.
We held one another as the exhaustion started to take over. My eyes drooped and I closed them only for a second before he spoke.
“How’s about adding another title. That title being wife?”
“Kyson...”
“Don’t you dare say it’s too soon. I don’t give a fuck about soon or the amount of time we’ve had together. I only care about what I feel for you. What Hope just proved she feels for you. And there is no way on God’s green earth that you are not going to be ours. So why wait?”
I inhaled full and deep and evaluated my feelings and thoughts on everything that had happened the past three months. Finding out I had sisters. Inheriting money from a man who didn’t know me, but felt a kinship to me. Learning about my birth mother. Meeting Kyson. Falling in love. Building my dream job with my best friend. Growing my family to include a grandparent, sisters, brothers-in-law and becoming a mother to a motherless little girl I loved more than my own life. I’d lived five years in the past three months, and I didn’t want to waste another day being uncertain.
Kyson and Hope were what I wanted. Pueblo was where I chose to live. The bakery was my dream job. I wanted to be close to my sisters and watch them grow their families right alongside my own.
“Okay,” I finally said. “I’ll marry you.”
His entire body trembled around me. “I’m thinking Vegas, first chance we get. When Hope’s cast comes off. You, me, Hope, your sisters, their men, your parents, mine, my brothers, Jasper and his parents. Family trip to Vegas.”
I grinned, thinking how much fun it would be for the entire crew to go to Vegas. It could have worked but something about it didn’t feel right.
Out of nowhere, in a glass-enclosed room with no windows to the outside world, I felt a breeze flutter my hair, and the scent of bergamot and patchouli tickled my nose.
“Do you smell that?” Kyson asked and my heart started to pound.
I grinned. “Yeah. And I’ve got an idea about our wedding.”
“Anything, baby. All I want is you,” he murmured into my hair.
“Instead of Vegas, I’m thinking Atlantic City. Gordon Ramsay owns a restaurant there. And even better...the Cake Boss’s bakery is in Hoboken, New Jersey, and it’s always been on my bucket list.”
Kyson laughed and the sound was music to my ears. “Like I said. Anything you want. Anywhere you want. I just want you.”
My heart was in my throat as I closed my eyes and thought about how my mother went to Atlantic City and found the man she loved her entire short life. And that choice was the beginning of everything. My sisters. Me. The family I now have. She married that man after knowing him a single weekend. I was planning to marry Kyson after knowing him such a short time. Funny how things came full circle.
I fell asleep in Kyson’s arms, our daughter healing in the bed close to us, knowing with my entire heart that my mother would be proud of the life she gave me.
Epilogue
Three months later...
The blindfold that covered my eyes made my hearing acute. Kyson’s hands were holding me at the biceps as I was led to what I thought was a door. Hope was holding on to my skirt, giggling herself silly.
“Don’t peek, Mommy!” she teased and laughed.
Hearing her happiness settled my soul. We’d been through a rough and yet still wonderful three months. A week after the accident, Hope was officially released from the hospital. Jasper and I put all work on the bakery on hold. We both had an inheritance to fall back on; we could wait to start our dream until everyone in our lives was healthy. Kyson and I wanted to be with Hope while she healed at home, and Lincoln had to pick up the slack on the rest of the work that had built up while Hope was in the hospital. Jasper hung out with me and Hope during the day after the first couple weeks, dealt with all of our vendors and made sure everything would be ready to start in three months’ time.
During that period, Hope recovered. It was amazing how fast children bounced back after a trauma, though those first few weeks of nightly nightmares, anger of not being able to use her arm and the headaches she continued to have were trying. Still, she persevered.
Last week, she got her cast off, the headaches were gone, her ribs healed up and she was now a boisterous little girl again. In celebration, the three of us, along with the rest of our family, bought plane tickets, made hotel reservations and jetted off to Atlantic City. We were married in the same little wedding chapel overlooking the ocean where Catori and Adam were married.
Toko wore his celebratory dress, which moved me to tears. After we said our “I dos” he thanked us for giving him the experience. He appreciated seeing where his daughter had married her husband and said it made him feel closer to her. At our wedding he gave me a wooden box, similar to what was given to Evie on her big day. In it was a blue turquoise hair comb that he said Topsannah wore when she married him fifty years ago. There was also a letter from my mother. In that letter she spoke of how she hoped my life was filled with unending happiness as that was her greatest intention all those years ago when she left me with my fathers.
We had a reception and dinner at Gordon Ramsay Steak in Atlantic City. The next day we all trekked our way to Hoboken so I could see Carlo’s Bakery. We gorged on so many treats, there were bellyaches all around. Absolutely worth it.
Now it was a week later, and I was blindfolded and being led somewhere by Hope and Kyson for a surprise.
“Okay, Isa, you ready?” His deep voice rumbled in my ear.
I nodded. “Ready as I’m ever going to be.” I laughed but it turned into a gasp when he whipped the blindfold off my head and I was staring at my bakery.
My completed, perfectly beautiful, sparkling and shiny bakery.
Jasper held his hands up in the air from behind the gorgeous display counter and cried out, “Welcome to On the Sweet Side!”
“Oh, my God!” I covered my mouth and looked around, then turned and saw my entire family.
My dad Casey, my papa Ian, Toko, Suda Kaye, Camden, Evie, Milo, Lincoln, Razor, Carol, Vince and last but certainly not least, Kyson and Hope. They all started clapping and cheering.
I couldn’t hold back the tears that fell down my cheeks. “What did you do?” I focused on Kyson.
He pulled me into his arms and cupped my cheek. “We had a job that needed to be delayed another week. So we’ve been able to bust ass on the bakery since the day after we got back from Atlantic City.”