“Iris Dalton, you bled for my mother before you knew her name. You protected your brother when the world gave you nothing. You stood in rooms that tried to make you small and somehow made them look smaller instead.” His voice roughened. “I do not deserve you, but I will spend my life making sure you never regret choosing me.”
You covered your mouth.
“I love you,” he said. “Not because you saved anyone. Not because you are brave. Not because you healed something in me I thought was dead. I love you because you are you, and for the first time in my life, I want forever to mean something other than survival.”
The garden blurred.
You thought of the ballroom.
The slap.
The scar.
The clinic.
Liam’s hand in yours.
Elena’s soft voice calling you brave.
You thought of all the doors that had once closed because you were poor, tired, invisible, easy to discard.
Then you looked at Roman Cross kneeling before you, offering not a cage, but a choice.
“Yes,” you whispered.
His eyes closed.
For one second, the most feared man in New York looked saved.
Then he slid the ring onto your finger and stood, pulling you into a kiss that tasted like rain, fire, and every impossible thing you had survived to reach this moment.
Six months later, you married him in a small ceremony at Elena’s foundation clinic in Brooklyn.
Not at a cathedral. Not at a hotel ballroom. Not beneath chandeliers where rich people whispered poison while pretending to bless love.
You married him in the courtyard of a clinic that now treated families regardless of whether they could pay.
Liam walked you down the aisle, breathing steadily, grinning like he had personally defeated death just to embarrass you in public. Elena cried before the music even started. Roman stood at the end of the aisle in a black suit, his eyes fixed on you as if the whole city could fall and he would not look away.
Your scar had faded, but it had not vanished.
