CEO Single Dad Falls For Her, Never Expected She’d Love His Kids Like Her Own
Chapter 10
The wedding took place six months later.
Small.
Private.
Family.
No reporters.
No business partners.
No investors.
Just people who mattered.
Before the ceremony, Ava stood alone in a bedroom.
Lily entered wearing a tiny white dress.
“You look pretty.”
“So do you.”
Lily hugged her.
“Are you going to be my mommy?”
Ava knelt.
“What do you want?”
“I want you.”
Ava’s eyes filled.
“Then I’ll be here.”
Lily hugged her tighter.
“But you don’t have to call me anything you don’t want to.”
Lily thought.
“Can I call you Ava?”
“Of course.”
“Okay.”
She paused.
“Sometimes I’ll call you Mom.”
Ava cried.
“That’s okay too.”
Across the hallway, Ethan heard.
He looked away.
Noah stood beside him.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Are you crying?”
“No.”
“You are.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
Noah grinned.
At the ceremony, Ethan looked at Ava.
She looked at the children.
Then at him.
Her vows were simple.
“I didn’t come into your lives knowing how much you would mean to me.”
She looked at Noah and Lily.
“But you taught me that family isn’t always the family you begin with.”
Her eyes moved to Ethan.
“Sometimes it’s the family you choose.”
Ethan’s voice shook during his vows.
“I thought protecting my children meant keeping the world away.”
He looked at Ava.
“Then you showed me that sometimes protection means letting someone in.”
They married beneath a garden arch.
Lily threw flowers.
Noah complained about the suit.
And for the first time in years, Ethan didn’t think about what he had lost.
He thought about what he had found.
