“Then we’ll be friends and raise her together. The important thing is that she feels loved and safe.”
“And your feelings for me?”
Mike took her hand.
“They never went away. For eight years, I thought you betrayed me, but I still missed you. Now that I know the truth…”
“What now?”
“Now I want to start over. Slowly. Give us a second chance.”
Hope’s eyes filled with tears.
“Mike, what if the treatment doesn’t work?”
“Then we’ll spend every second we have together. And Daisy will know her parents loved each other.”
“And if it does work?”
“Then we have the rest of our lives.”
Six months of intensive treatment later, the doctors delivered the news they had been praying for: full remission. The cancer was gone.
“Mom’s okay!” Daisy shouted, dancing around the living room. “Daddy, Mom’s okay!”
“She is, sweetie. She really is.”
Hope stood there, thinner than before but alive and glowing. Her hair was starting to grow back, and the light had returned to her eyes.
“Thank you,” she told Mike. “For everything. For the doctors, for this home, for believing in us.”
“Thank you for giving me a daughter. And for forgiving me for those lost years. We were both victims of someone else’s game. But we’re free now.”
On Daisy’s eighth birthday, Mike asked Hope to marry him. It wasn’t a grand public gesture, just a quiet moment at home with the people who mattered most.
“Hope, will you marry me? For real this time, and forever?”
“Yes,” she said without a second’s hesitation. “Absolutely, yes.”
“Yay!” Daisy cheered. “Now we’re a real family!”
“We were already a real family,” Mike said, pulling them both into a hug. “Now we’re just making it official.”
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