Only One Kiss (Only One 1)

“Candace,” I say. “I never thought I was capable of love.” I start to talk, and I have to wipe away my own tears when I think about her. “Then I had Ari, and I knew I could love. It was a love that you couldn’t explain.”

“Me,” Ari says, pointing at herself when I say her name.

“Then I met this woman who was a gift from heaven really. You came into my life with your sweetness and your gentleness. You came into my life without even blinking an eye or shying away. I love you with everything that I am. I love your smile and your frown. I love the gentle way you hold my hand. I love the way you kiss me just because. I love the way you let Ari bake with you, knowing that she is going to make more of a mess than anything else. I love that you love our daughter with everything that you have.” I look down. “I want to walk down the aisle with you. I want to promise to love, honor, and cherish you for the rest of my life. I want to have a baby with you. I want to sit down and tell them stories about how much I love you. I want to hold your hand now and for the rest of my life.” I grab the blue square box in my pocket and open it. “Will you marry us?” I ask her, and she still has her hands over her mouth, and she nods. “She said yes, Ari,” I say, getting up and grabbing Candace’s face and kissing her. “I love you,” I say, and I’m interrupted by Ari, who sneaks in the middle of us and holds her hands up to Candace.

“Yes, I’ll marry you both,” she says, kissing Ari who lays her head on her shoulder.

“I’ve dreamed about this moment for my whole life, I think,” she says. “Felt it in my heart that you were the one for me. Felt it in the very first kiss. It’s stupid. I know it is.”

“No, it’s not. All it took was one kiss for me, too. I thought it was strange, but all it took was,” I say, “only one kiss.”Epilogue TwoCandaceTwo years later

“That’s it; you can do it,” Ralph says, pushing my hair back. My eyes close as I try to breathe through the contraction. “You are doing so good,” he says, and I open my eyes now as the pain subsides. Rubbing my swollen stomach, we’ve been in the hospital for three hours now. My water broke at home while I was picking up Ari. Needless to say, he wasn’t thrilled with that either. For the past eight months, he’s treated me like I was glass, and every single time I moved or had a pain, he was on the phone with the doctor. He even had my mother fly in when he was going to be gone for more than two days.

“That one was hard,” I say, and he nods and gets up to press the button again. “What are you doing?” He stands there dressed in shorts and a polo, his hair showing how nervous he is by the number of times he’s run his hands through it. “You seriously need to relax,” I say and look over at the monitor that shows the baby’s heart rate. “I’m fine; the baby is fine.” He ignores me, waiting for the nurse to come in.

Sandy, the nurse, comes in, and this time, she is less in a rush than she was the first ten times. “What is the problem, Mr. Weber?”

“She said the last one hurt and was a hard one,” he says to the nurse, and she rolls her lips, trying not to laugh. “I’m sure it was, but I checked her five minutes ago, and she was at three centimeters.”

“But what if,” he says and looks at me and then at her. “Are you sure she’s okay?”

“I can tell you one hundred percent that all her vitals are good.” She puts her hand on his. “We’ve got her.” She turns and walks out of the room, and I look at him.

“What?” he says, throwing up his hands. “You can never be too safe.” If I didn’t love him with every single beat of my heart, I would now.

“Why don’t you go and call my mother and check on Ari for me?” I try to change his mind, and he nods, walking out of the room, but I can see him standing in the hallway. I look down at the engagement and wedding ring on my left finger, actually two wedding rings. The day of our wedding was the day I officially adopted Ariella. She was mine before the piece of paper was signed, but on the day of our wedding, he slipped an extra ring on my finger for her.