✧ ❈ ✧Yes After Everything✧ ❈ ✧

❈ ❈ Alessia Pov ❈ ❈

The divorce papers came on a Tuesday.

I was at Jeffrey's apartment—my apartment now, really, since I'd moved in all my stuff—and I sat at the kitchen table staring at the envelope like it might explode. Tom, my lawyer, had called an hour earlier to say everything was finalized. Edward had signed. No fight, no drama. Just his signature on the line that said he was no longer mine and I was no longer his.

"You okay?" Jeffrey came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders.

"Yeah," I said. "Actually, I think I am."

He kissed the top of my head. "Want to go out tonight? Celebrate?"

"Is that weird? Celebrating a divorce?"

"Celebrating your freedom? No. That's not weird."

Seven months later, I was standing in front of a mirror in a white dress that wasn't elaborate or expensive, but was perfect. Simple silk. Clean lines. Me.

My baby—Liam, we had named him Liam—was asleep in Jeffrey's sister's arms, dressed in a tiny suit that made him look like he was going to negotiate contracts instead of napping through his father's wedding.

"You look beautiful," my mother said, adjusting the small white flowers in my hair. She'd flown in for this. Had cried when I told her about Edward, had met Jeffrey, and had basically adopted him on the spot. "He's going to lose his mind when he sees you."

"He's seen me in my pajamas for seven months," I said. "I think the magic is gone."

"There's always magic," my mom said, and the way she looked at me, like she was proud, like she finally felt like I was going to be okay made me believe her.

The ceremony was small. Just family and the few friends who'd stuck around when my marriage imploded. Jeffrey stood at the altar in a dark suit, looking at me like I was the only thing in the room worth looking at. When I reached him, he took my hand, and I felt the tremor in his fingers.

"Hey," he whispered.

"Hey," I whispered back.

The vows were simple. He promised to love me and Liam. To be present. To never disappear again. To build a life that was real and honest and ours.

I promised to let him in. To trust him. To give us a chance.

We kissed, and everyone clapped, and Liam woke up and cried, and it was messy and imperfect and real.

༺✿༻ ༺✿༻

After the wedding, everything settled into a rhythm that actually felt sustainable.

Jeffrey went to work—he was some kind of consultant, something he never talked much about, but it paid well and kept him busy—and I stayed home with Liam. We had a routine. Wake up, feed the baby, have coffee together before Jeffrey leaves. He'd come home, take Liam so I could shower or read or just have five minutes to myself. Dinner together. Bath time where both of them splashed each other and I watched from the doorway thinking this is what normal feels like.

He treated me like I mattered.

That's what I noticed most. When I said I was tired, he didn't dismiss it. He took Liam and told me to nap. When I was sad—which I was sometimes, missing the version of myself that existed before Edward—he just held me and didn't try to fix it. When I wanted to go back to work eventually, he didn't question it. He just said okay and started figuring out how to make it work.

He carried me along. That's what you'd call it. He didn't drag me. Didn't rush me. Just made space for me to exist in and showed up every day.

Three months into the marriage, I realized I was happy. Like genuinely, uncomplicated happiness. Not the desperate, performative happiness I'd felt with Edward. Just... okay. Settled. At peace.

One night, after Liam was asleep, I was lying in bed next to Jeffrey reading when he just turned and looked at me.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing. Just looking at you."

"That's creepy."

"Only a little." He smiled. "I'm just making sure this is real. That you're actually here and I'm not going to wake up and find out it was a dream."

I set my book down. "It's real."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." I moved closer to him. "This is real. We're real."

He kissed me, slow and certain, and I let myself fall into it. Let myself believe that good things could happen. That you could survive betrayal and come out the other side still whole. Still capable of loving someone.

Still deserving of being loved back.

That was the gift Jeffrey gave me. Not just his presence or his love, but the belief that I was worth staying for.

And that made all the difference.