Consequential

/ˌkänsəˈkwen(t)SHəl/

adjective

following as a result or effect

As we danced around the ballroom at Moira and Calum's reception, I found myself overcome with emotions, unknowing how to express in a crowd this large. Being that Luke and I were the most important individuals in the bridal and groom parties, not including the bride and groom obviously, we had no choice but to stay, which made me rethink of a way to show Luke how dedicated I was to him.

"I have this thing where I remember all of the little things you do Luke," I whispered to him, holding his gaze steadily as we danced upon the massive expanse of the hangar. Memories from our entire time together fluttered through my mind as I tried to find a way to somehow describe to him what Calum had told me from earlier that day. I tried to find a way to tell him that he had all of me.

"Personally, I think it has to do with my way of ensuring my love for you is true," I stated with a shrug of my shoulders as Luke let out a hearty chuckle, his blue eyes never moving far from mine. He was perfection, standing there in his black ensemble that was the best he could do for his friend on short notice. His hair was slightly gelled back and looked as though he had someone else do it for him.

Nevertheless, he looked like himself: the same Luke I had met on that day when he rescued me from the laboratory, the same Luke that had told me he would never love me, and the same Luke that told me that we would get married just as Moira and Calum had today when this war ended. Luke, despite all of his faults and changing circumstances, was still Luke.

"Firstly, I vividly remember the slur in your voice when you are drunk or super tired or just acting stupid," I told him, watching him roll his eyes as he found my statement to be one of the most endearing things he had ever heard. Luke wasn't accustomed to hearing those type of things since he had a unorthodoxed upbringing, but I knew it was crucial in his self-esteem to hear that someone took notice of those things.

It was dire that I expressed how I had counted every single heartbeat of his when I tried to fall asleep on his chest. Likewise, I found it was my responsibility to remind him of my undying love for him in general. Just like me, Luke was a product of cruel circumstance and I couldn't stand to watch him struggle as I did with the same self loathing attributes that contributed in all of my doubt.

"I have memorized the fear in your eyes every time you have a choice to make about anything concerning the men," I mumbled into his ear, adjusting myself so that I may lean my head against his shoulder, recognizing the feeling of my place in his body. My memory flashed back to the first time I had done this, remembering how he told me that only Cynthia and I had ever had the honor of occupying the spot.

"You act tough and strong and like you don't care," I continued on, feeling his shoulders slightly tense before relaxing under my touch once again, "but you are good Luke and that's why you care." I could feel a deep breath release from him as I continued on in my speech, his obvious issues with self-esteem that had stemmed from his traumatic past posing a threat against my compliments.

"I remember all of our late night conversations as we lied in bed beside each other with your arms around me and assuring me that I would never be alone again," I told him, holding a bit tighter as I considered how he had been affected by my disappearance and how he was still reeling from it. Each time I remembered this pain I had caused him, I found myself losing my composure.

No matter how many times I would look back on that time with a smile, remembering Michael, Calum, Ashton, and Luke's support the whole way through, I would always find myself crumbling and falling apart. The fact was that I could not look back on that time without remembering everything I had lost since then and wonder if I had recovered quicker, would something be different?

Yet, each time those self incriminating thoughts would infiltrate my mind, I found my refuge in Luke, who would wrap his arms tightly around me and speak about our future as if he already had seen it with his own eyes. Everything Luke said was beautiful to me simply due to it coming from his, but when I heard him speak fondly of myself and his dreamt children, something would alight within my heart.

Maybe it was because of my maternal instincts or maybe it was due to my fear of him leaving me, but regardless, I still found myself oddly satisfied with his words about how we would make it through this despite our futures being uncertain. That was what I thought was the most amazing about his revelations.

Despite our futures being unknown and the obvious demonstrations through our friend's horrid demises, Luke could still look me dead in the eyes without flinching and say the words 'I love you and I can not wait to have a life with you.' Although we weren't at the point Moira and Calum were at yet, I knew that we had our time, and when it was right, I would be the one in a flowing gown while Luke placed kisses upon my forehead in his well fitted tuxedo.

"I still remember how you left me alone all that time in my first months of being here," I giggled, watching him shake his head at the thought of ever leaving me alone again as I backed my head out of his neck to catch a glimpse of his beautiful blue orbs. He looked as though he wanted to speak, but I had it in my mind to continue my speech without interruptions.

"You thought I wasn't worth your time, or at least that's what I thought," I told him, assessing the look of confusion filtering into his features. It occurred to me that none of this had even crossed Luke's mind, but that's what I found to be amazing about it. I was recounting our entire love story without a moment of thought because when you love someone, the little things stand out and become etched in your mind.

"But come to find out, you were just as scared as I was to take that first leap of faith." I smiled up at him, noticing how one of his hands moved from my hip to move a stray hair out of my face while I looked at him with a sudden feeling of clarity overcoming me. He was my everything, and I could easily recognize that even now as we stood in the hangar of the colony.

Had I been told only a few years before that I would love the man standing before me, I would have laughed in anyone's face because he was not the type of person that was easy to love. Luke was the hardest person to love. Loving him was like trying to find something that did not exist, that was because he was so reserved that no one else had the strength to love him. No one else gave him the chance to be loved.

"I will always remember your endless apologies because I find it extremely hard to forget them when they were holding me together at the seams for so long." Tears filled his eyes as I moved my hand from behind his neck to his cheek, wiping the tear so that no one would see that the leader of the special operatives unit was crying due to his girlfriend's words of love.

"Not to mention, you're always finding something else to be sorry for," I giggle slightly, watching how he moved his face closer to mine in order to place another kiss to my cheek as he had been doing that entire night. I caught myself becoming overly emotional that night, which would explain my long speech, but I think that it was because of the step that had been performed in front of us.

If it wasn't obvious before, I was extremely old-fashioned and believed that marriage was the binding of souls through a written contract that only concerned love. While I knew not everyone was married for love long ago, I liked to believe that when I married a man, I would be able to bind my life to him and trust him with all of myself, which is what I did with Luke.

"I will always remember you're sarcastic ways and how you have laughed multiple times at my expense," I joked, giving a fake glare as he simply shrugged his shoulders as if to say that he couldn't help it, which caused me to laugh even harder. "But that's okay because I do the same to you- you just don't know it."

With that confession, Luke's mouth opened in shock, causing me to almost double over in laughter as I imagined the same face adorning his features when he became older. My eyes brimmed with tears as I imagined that, him and I old and sitting on a patio in our small home as our grandchildren run across the lawn, closely followed by their parents.

"I still remember the way you gave me the feeling of a dozen butterflies swarming within my stomach in my first encounter with you," I recited, remembering the stupid quiff that he had upon his head for all of those years, which caused me to laugh out in the middle of Moira and Calum's wedding reception to everyone else's dismay.

His younger face still floated in my memory as I remembered what he looked like before his face filled out and his beard began to grow out. I recalled the way his hair would always be styled unlike his hair now, which was normally in kinks of unruly curls. Despite his effort to clean shave and fix his hair, Luke looked nothing like he did when we met, which did not bother me at all.

I liked how he had changed, it reminded me of all of the times we had been through and the people we had lost. Bags under his eyes reminded me of the constant nights where we both lacked sleep due to our child's death, which was closely followed by both Michael's and Janice's. His Adam's apple still bobbed out as it had done multiple times when he swallowed deeply as we buried Michael.

Then, his jawline had gotten much more prominent since when I had met him, its jutting out most likely beginning while I was away from him for those six months; however, I noticed it more after the death of Riley when we had both struggled to stomach food until the grief had finally subsided and we were forced to accept that the young girl we had begun raising was no longer ours.

"I remember the way you distant, cold eyes used to haunt me in my sleep when you told me that you could never be with me and blamed it on the unpredictability of life," I told him, looking deeply in his eyes as I recalled the vague moments with intense clarity. He had tried to make me run for the hills, but in reality, he just kept pulling me back into his grasp with each threat of non-existent love.

He had been adamant that he would scar me and leave me broken and mangled due to his human incapacities, but I had looked past that and seen that beneath he was still the same man he was before, only slightly more scarred. Luke was never going to be like the Prince Charmings that littered the fairytale books, and that's what he was trying to tell me when he pushed me away.

Unfortunately for him, I had never imagined myself being with a Prince Charming. I had always imagined myself being with a man that would have issues because then he would be able to relate with me. When I had dreamt of my love, I had dreamt of a protector, not a Prince Charming that would appear attractive from the outside and be a perfect human being.

I never wanted a perfect human being to be the love of my life because I knew I would always fall short of his expectations. Instead, I wanted a man like Luke. A man that recognized his faults and attempted to change them in order to become a better man. I did not care if he did fix those issues as long as he tried, which was what Luke was trying to do: become the man he wanted to be for me.

"I recall the time when I fell apart because you said that and the way I took out my anger on the ground of my room," I allowed another sigh to release from my mouth with that statement, remembering how Michael was the first to be on the scene and how Michael had taken on my older brother's obligations in threatening Luke. Those were the moments permanently imbedded into my mind.

"Then it all ended in you coming to my hospital room in tears and taking back all of those stupid excuses for being afraid to love someone." I mumbled, leaning further into his chest as he leaned down to gently place his lips upon mine as he had always done. Nothing felt more complete in that moment as I stared up at the beautiful man before me and found the greatest things appearing in demeanor.

Luke had changed so much, not only in physical appearance, but also in emotional and mental maturity. He was now a man that recognized his faults and addressed them instead of standing idly by as they overcame him. These past three years had affected him in ways that I could not even imagine, but that was a good thing.

"I remember the way you always stroked my hair when I would feel tired or sick or cranky," I mumbled into his shirt, being sure not to place lipstick stains upon the white fabric as I caught myself wanting to bask in the fanciness of his outfit for as long as I could. I knew this would not happen any time soon again, so as I spoke, I took my mental pictures.

The way his hair was slicked back, the way his blue eyes sparkled in the moonlight and cheap light bulbs filling the hangar, and the way his smile stretched across his entire face as he gazed down at me with the most admiration that I had ever seen in my life.

"I remember vividly the way you would get hurt and I would have to somehow recover from the thought of losing you for the hundredth time." He laughed at this, knowing that this was his major flaw of all the time we had been together: he was a worrier. While I found it endearing at times, I also poked fun at him for it on several occurrences.

"I know everything about you," I mumbled lightly, looking up to see his eyes shining so brightly down at me. Butterflies exploded in my stomach once again as I found myself attempting to hide my jealousy toward Moira for being able to call her love her own. Luke was never one for these types of speeches, but as I looked up at him, I realized how much I had changed him.

Yes, we may not have been getting married at that moment, but we would be getting married one day. And that was enough for me as I told him, "it scares me so much because we both know that we won't find anyone else like each other." Luke looked as though he fully agreed with my assessment as he leaned down once again, pressing our foreheads together in order to allow me to finish my speech.

"But I also remember the way I knew I loved you long before I said it," I told him, watching as he mouthed out the word 'ditto' as opposed to interrupting me as he knew how much I hated that. I laughed at his antics, pulling his body even closer to mine while my hands slid up and down his back in order to ease the tension in his muscles.

"Luke, I want you to know that I knew the moment I met you, something was different." His eyes filled with a confusion I had never seen before as though he did not understand what I was going to follow the statement up with, which was surprising due to our knowledge of each other, but I ignored it and continued on, "and since that moment, you have never stopped proving me right."

Those words caused all confusion to diminish from his features as a smile broke out onto his face and his teeth showed through his opened lips. I was in awe of his reaction, knowing how hard it was for him to commit to things, let alone myself in a relationship. This was the actual proof that he had changed in those three years. He wanted a future with me.

"And I am beyond ecstatic to be your fiance, Mr. Hemmings," I whispered into his ear, knowing that this would be a great answer to his previous question. His eyes lit up at this, knowing that this was the answer he had been hoping for in regards to the unasked question that he had been holding back the entire time.

At first, he appeared shocked, but that gradually turned to excitement as his lips encompassed mine yet again in a stronger fashion. I heard others in the background cheering for us as if they had put the dots together, but I paid no attention as I lost myself in the brilliant man before me, the one who I knew would always protect and love me in all times.

So this was what love felt like.