it starts with a glance.
divorce papers signed , ring on her finger , hannah is nursing a cup of coffee as she looks outside. after today , none of their neighbors will have reason to turn their noses up. after today , she won’t be mrs. grose anymore ( she stopped being that yesterday , with her divorce finally finished. usually she would have had to wait at least a month before getting to remarry but her extenuating circumstances was that sam had been allowed to live the life he chose while she had been stuck in limbo. and she hadn’t cried , she hadn’t begged for an answer to why. she simply said he owed her. and that she never wanted to see him again ) but mrs. sharma. it’s something she hadn’t allowed herself to really think about. it was bittersweet , how much she wanted it but how much she feared it would never happen. sam walking into their restaurant may have been the best thing to happen to her because it meant finally closing him out of her life completely.
it mean finally being able to give everything to owen: body , heart , love and name.
shuffling and the creak of that damn single floorboard have her looking up and over her shoulder. it’s the look in his eye that makes her place down her coffee. it’s his extended hand that has hannah joining him , wearing nothing but his sweater from the day before. for a moment , they just stand there. she imagines they’re thinking the same thing. that after all the years pining and hoping , waiting , it seems almost unbelievable they’re so close to it. in a few hours , when the courthouse opens , they’ll go and be married ( they already decided to share the rest of their lives together but now they’ll share a name ) and that will be that. hannah has only been a single woman for a few hours but she longs to be married to owen. they’d been working towards leaving to go live in paris together for years.
this is the icing on an already incredible cake.
last night had been passion. it had been years of not knowing and then months of keeping their hands to themselves. hannah refused to go without kissing him but when it came to actually being with owen , she found she couldn’t make herself cross that line. not because of sam but rather because she didn’t feel it was fair to have another man’s name and be so intimate with him. when she held up the papers , mouth trembling with emotion , they had collided like two forces , smiling too widely to kiss properly as they undressed. they spoke their love for each other with shaking hands. they spoke it aloud against each other’s skin. they came together with her on top , hands laying on his chest. owen had looked up at her like she was a revelation and she was too full of love and him to be self - conscious or think about how long it had been.
this morning is slow. his thumb smooths against her cheek and she tilts her head up and they kiss. kiss until they have to stop to remove his sweater from her body. kiss as he picks her up to sit her up on the kitchen island ( she’ll need to clean it later , sanitize it and try not to think of this every time she sees it ). hannah refuses to let owen get too far from her , legs wrapped around his waist and arms around his neck. whereas last night they had talked ( talked about their love , about how good the other felt , about getting married as soon as they could the next day and the ring on her finger ), they say nothing now. they don’t need to. the sun hasn’t even risen yet but there are so many things she is sure of for the day.
they’re getting married.
she loves him.
and while romances usually don’t work out , somehow theirs had.