I thought I knew exactly what I was getting into when I married Rowan. But a week after our wedding, I heard something behind a closed door that changed everything — and forced me to see what love really is when no one is watching.
When people ask me how I met Rowan, I always reply, "He made me laugh on the worst day of my life."
What I never say is that I was sitting outside a hospital 30 minutes after my father died.
I was watching the rain on the sidewalk and thinking about giving up on everything. He rolled over in his wheelchair and offered me a coffee, pure black, without sugar, as if he had known me for years.
"You looked like you needed it more than I did," he said.
"He made me laugh on the worst day of my life."
He lost both legs above the knee in an explosion at an American military base. When he talks about it, he simply says, "I managed to come back." He sometimes wears prosthetics, but most of the time he gets around in a wheelchair.
Rowan is strong and incredibly stubborn. He never lets anyone help him unless he absolutely has to.
My parents tried to support him. My mother, Gina, never really hid her doubts. The day before our wedding, as I stood at her kitchen counter picking up the invisible lint from my wedding dress, she lingered in the doorway.
"Think about it, Mikayla. You won't even have a proper wedding dance. Is this how you want to start your marriage?"
Rowan is strong and incredibly stubborn.
I tried to laugh it off, but it stuck with me. "I want a wedding, Mom. Not a dance or a performance."
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