I Think We Missed Our Turn - L.A. Witt Page 0,44

couple?”

He grinned. “To be fair, we were stubbornly refusing to believe it.”

“Hmm, true.” I slid my hands up the front of his shirt. “Love wins over stubbornness, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, it does.” He drew me in, and our lips brushed as he whispered, “I love you.”

My heart did things it never had before, and just before he kissed me, I murmured, “I love you too.”

Yeah, maybe we’d been slower on the uptake than everyone around us.

But we’d gotten the message eventually.

Better late than never, right?

Epilogue

Armin

Two years later.

As I walked in from the parking lot, the “Closed For Private Event” sign outside the gallery made me smile. It wasn’t that uncommon for Dad to close the place if someone was willing to cough up enough money. During the holiday season, there were a ton of high society and corporate Christmas parties here.

But on exceedingly rare occasions, the gallery was closed for a Jahani family event.

Today, like it had been twice before in the past, it was closed for a wedding reception—mine.

Mine, and the man who was walking beside me, still wearing his tux and smiling as big as he had through our ceremony.

I pulled open the door and gestured for him to go ahead. “After you.”

“Aww, you’re so polite when you’re dressed up.” He gave my ass a smack as he walked past. “How do I get you to be like this at home?”

“What?” I scoffed, following him into the gallery. “I’m polite at home.”

“I don’t see you holding doors open for me all the time.”

“Because you’re usually walking ahead of me, so I—”

“Pfft. Excuses.”

“Oh my God. Really?” I rolled my eyes.

Marques just laughed, and I chuckled as I followed him inside. Our playful banter was one of my favorite things about us, especially since we’d only done it more since we’d decided to start dating. It had taken me a while to figure out why that was, but eventually I’d realized that we’d always reined it back a little to keep from giving the appearance of flirting. Now it was flirting, and I loved it.

We wandered into the gallery to where our guests were starting to congregate beside the open bar and hors d’oeuvre trays. We were greeted with congratulations and hugs, and once we had drinks in hand, we made the rounds to say hello to everyone.

All the while, I still couldn’t believe we’d finally done it. Even now that we were at our wedding—now that we were officially married—I still struggled to get it through my head that Marques and I were a couple. It was just so easy with him. Instead of feeling like we’d taken some dramatic plunge into a wildly different relationship, it was like we’d upgraded our friendship. We still bantered. We still worked together. We still talked about whatever—politics, sports, TV, art. It was like being super close friends who also had sex and a joint bank account. After things had been so rough with my ex, it blew my mind that being in love with someone could be so easy.

That wasn’t to say everything had been easy. We’d both still had things to work through from our previous relationships, though having someone to talk to about it definitely helped. And relationships were what they were—once that initial honeymoon phase wore off, then things got real, and it was challenging. We did okay, though, I thought. Being friends for a long time had helped. We’d known each other already. We’d just started spending a lot more time together, and we’d started sleeping together. Not exactly difficult.

But it wasn’t all easy. After the way things had been with my ex, I’d been terrified of fighting with Marques. For a while, I’d avoided any kind of pushback because I didn’t want to fight. I can only walk on eggshells for so long, though, and eventually, I’d started experimentally digging in my heels. I’d still been scared of things finally erupting into an actual argument, though. Either he’d get frustrated and leave, or we’d end up in the endless cycle of eggshell-walking and screaming matches.

A month or so after we’d moved in together, it finally happened. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what had set it off, only that I’d been equally angry and panicked. It hadn’t even been that much of a fight—just an argument where we’d both raised our voices a little because we’d both been frustrated as fuck.

But then it was over. We’d calmed down. We’d both apologized. We hadn’t jumped into