“I can’t believe that’s how it happened.” Her eyes flutter closed, and she continues to speak with them shut. “We waited years to tell them only for it to blow up in our faces like that.” Her eyebrows pull together and she bites her bottom lip and not in that sexy way I love although I still can’t help but feel the need to pull that lip between my teeth. “I feel like they’ll never forgive you. That I’m their daughter, so they’ll forgive me at some point. But they won’t forgive you.” Her eyes finally open and sweep to find my gaze which I catch. A tear slides down her face and I’m glad that we are back at my house so that I can comfort her properly. “And I worry you’ll grow to resent me for losing them. That they may not even want to come to our wedding…” She lets out a shaky breath. “If there’s even a potential for you and me anymore.”

I frown because after everything we’d been through today, I assumed that us being together in the long run was the one thing she could be sure about.

“You have doubts about me, now?” My voice sounds hurt and I know she can hear it because when her eyes meet mine, I can see the regret in her choice of words.

“I wasn’t sure. That was intense. I mean my dad and my mom,” she winces. “Have they even been angry at you?”

“No,” I answer honestly. “If anything, I mediated their arguments when we were in college. I was put in the middle of so many of their arguments fueled by tequila or jealousy or just stupidity. Not that it ever came anywhere near something like that.”

“And now you may have lost your best friends because of me.”

“Kevin and Michelle will come around eventually. I know them.”

“You know the versions of them whose daughter you weren’t sleeping with. What if they never get over this?”

“Then, I won’t have a relationship with my wife’s parents.” I shrug and her eyes widen at my words. “It’ll be hard, losing them. But, to your point, I chose them once and I spent three years being miserable.” I turn in my seat and rub my hand down her cheek, rubbing a thumb under her eye to collect the stray tears that had lingered on her skin. “I’m not losing you twice in a lifetime.”