PART 3

Despite myself, I laughed.

Then another paragraph near the end of the letter caught my attention.

Luke had written about my sister.

He described watching me rearrange my entire life whenever she needed help and how fiercely I loved her.

My throat tightened.

“You wrote about her.”

Luke’s face softened.

“You loved her.”

After her death, he’d cooked for me, answered calls I couldn’t face, driven me places, and stayed awake beside me while I cried.

“Why did you stay through all of that?” I asked.

His eyebrows drew together.

“What?”

“I wasn’t myself for a long time.”

“You were grieving.”

“I was a mess.”

“You’re the love of my life.”

He said it as though that should answer everything.

Maybe it did.

I looked down at the letter.

For most of my life, I’d measured beauty by all the wrong standards.

I’d looked at Luke and seen a man who could have chosen anyone.

Then I’d looked at myself and wondered why he’d settled for me.

Apparently, his mother had wondered the same thing.

Luke never had.

He’d thought I was beautiful from the beginning.

But beauty wasn’t the only reason he’d crossed that bakery to meet me.

He’d noticed what I did when I believed no one important was watching.

There had never been a catch.

Luke hadn’t married me despite who I was.

He had married me because of who I was—inside and out.

He watched my face carefully.

“Are you angry?”

“A little.”

“At me?”

“Mostly at the person who hid this letter for years.”

“Fair.”

I folded the pages again.

“But I’m angry at myself too.”

His smile disappeared.

“Why?”

“Because I’ve spent half our marriage waiting for you to prove you didn’t mean what you said in that bakery.”

He reached for my hand.

This time, I let him take it immediately.

I looked at the old letter resting between us.

“And apparently, you’ve spent all of it proving you did.”

His eyes filled with tears.

I leaned against him.

For years, I’d wondered how I could possibly have gotten so lucky.

That afternoon, I finally stopped asking.

There had never been a cruel joke hiding beneath our love story.

There was only a man who had noticed my face, noticed my heart, and decided he wanted to know both.

And a woman who had taken far too long to believe him.

But here is the real question: When someone has spent years loving you for who you truly are, do you keep measuring yourself through old insecurities, or finally believe the person who saw your worth before you could see it yourself?