Why the fuck not
The Chemistry of Two Pink Lines
The eight-burner Viking range in the Queen Anne Victorian was currently performing at peak capacity, which was usually the earliest warning sign that Isobel Stevens was either deeply unsettled or operating on three hours of fractured sleep.
The scent of caramelized butter, toasted pecans, and dark espresso had filled every square inch of the ground floor by six in the morning. On the honed Carrara marble island, a cooling rack held twelve buttermilk cinnamon scones, glazed in cream cheese frosting that was still faintly warm and translucent. Beside them sat a cast-iron skillet of gently sizzling applewood-smoked bacon and a bowl of fresh blackberries tossed in mint and Meyer lemon sugar.
Izzie stood in front of the commercial stove, barefoot, wearing one of Mark’s soft gray cotton Henley shirts that fell to mid-thigh, the sleeves rolled haphazardly past her elbows. Her golden hair was gathered into a messy, voluminous topknot secured by a wooden chopstick. She was furiously whisking farm-fresh eggs in a yellow ceramic bowl, her brow furrowed in fierce, unnecessary concentration.
She paused, blinking rapidly, and pressed the back of her wrist to her forehead.
A wave of strange, warm vertigo washed over her, making the patterned subway tiles behind the stove sway gently for two seconds. She swallowed hard, an abrupt, metallic taste coating the back of her throat, followed by a sour spike in her stomach that made her mouth water defensively.
"Ugh," Izzie muttered, setting the whisk down on a spoon rest. "Too much espresso. Definitely the third shot of espresso. Or the Greek yogurt went bad. I told the grocery delivery guy to check the expiration date on the dairy, but did he listen? No. Nobody listens to medical professionals when it comes to *Listeria monocytogenes*."
"Talking to dairy products before seven in the morning is generally considered an exclusionary criterion for surgical chief residency, Blondie."
Izzie jumped, spinning around, her hand clutching the counter.
Mark Sloan stood in the archway of the kitchen, looking like an advertisement for an obscene amount of inherited wealth and exceptional genetics. He was wearing dark navy flannel pajama bottoms that hung low on his lean, sculpted hips, his chest bare, his broad shoulders gleaming in the pale morning light cutting through the French doors. His silver-flecked hair was attractively disheveled from sleep, and he carried a steaming white porcelain mug of black coffee in his left hand.
On his wrist, his vintage Rolex ticked steadily. On his ring finger, a heavy, brushed-platinum band mirrored the five-point-two-carat diamond resting on Izzie’s left hand.
"You startled me," Izzie breathed, exhaling as she leaned back against the edge of the island. "And I wasn't talking to dairy. I was conducting a preliminary clinical differential on my gastrointestinal tract."
Mark strolled into the kitchen with that slow, panther-like glide that made Izzie’s stomach flutter regardless of how many times she’d seen it. He set his coffee mug down on the marble, stepped directly into her space, and wrapped his arms around her waist, hoisting her up until she was sitting on the edge of the counter between the scones and the cutting board.
"Good morning to you, too, Mrs. Sloan," Mark murmured, his voice a gravelly, sleep-roughened hum.
He leaned in, brushing his lips against the curve of her jaw, inhaling deeply. His stubble grazed her sensitive skin, sending a warm, pleasant shiver down the back of her thighs.
"You smell like cinnamon," he muttered against her throat. "And butter."
"I made breakfast," Izzie said, her fingers finding their usual home in the soft hair at the nape of his neck. "Since we actually have a joint day off before you do that twelve-hour microsurgical flap tomorrow and I’m on trauma call with Bailey."
"A day off," Mark repeated, his hands resting on her bare thighs, his calloused thumbs slowly stroking the pale, soft skin just beneath the hem of his shirt. "Which means term number five of the marital contract is officially open for execution."
Izzie let out a breathless laugh, though she gently pressed a palm against his broad, warm chest to hold him at bay. "Mark, let me finish the eggs. If they scorch, I will have to throw out the whole batch, and organic cage-free eggs are six dollars a dozen."
"We have three million dollars in liquid municipal bonds, Isobel. I will buy you a poultry farm."
"That's not the point. Wastefulness is a sin."
Mark didn't back away. Instead, his hazel eyes narrowed slightly, sweeping across her face with a quiet, razor-sharp intensity that made her chest tighten.
The playfulness in his demeanor didn't vanish, but it shifted into that hyper-perceptive, clinical focus he usually reserved for microsurgical anastomoses and complex reconstructive flaps. His gaze tracked the faint lavender shadows beneath her lower eyelids, the subtle flush high on her cheekbones, and the slight, protective way her fingers rested over her lower abdomen.
"You didn't drink your coffee," Mark observed softly, nodding toward the untouched mug sitting beside the yellow bowl.
"I told you, I felt a little nauseous. Probably a touch of a stomach bug from the pediatric floor. One of Robbins' patients sneezed directly into my eye during rounds two days ago."
"Right," Mark said smoothly. He reached out, his hand sliding up from her thigh, over the cotton of his Henley, until his palm rested flat, warm, and heavy against the center of her lower belly. "And the breast tenderness? The fact that you winced when you pulled your scrub top off last night?"
Izzie froze. Her breath caught in her throat. "I... I bruised a pectoral muscle assisting Callie with that orthopedic reduction. Those bone clamps require serious upper-body leverage."
"Isobel," Mark murmured, his thumb rubbing a slow, deliberate circle through the fabric over her navel. "What day is it?"
"It’s Thursday, Mark. Thursday the fourteenth."
"And when was the first day of your last menstrual cycle?"
Izzie blinked. She opened her mouth to snap at him, to deliver a sharp, witty reprimand about boundaries and personal space, but the words withered on her tongue. Her mind scrambled backward through the blur of twelve-hour shifts, on-call room trysts, emergency debridements, and nights tangled in 800-thread-count Egyptian cotton on Queen Anne Hill.
Maui. The courthouse. The frantic, barrier-free baby-making in the bungalow. The return to Seattle. The hallway confrontation with Alex. The pantry. The cab ride from Canlis...
Her breath stopped completely.
"I..." Izzie swallowed. "I’ve been stressed. Residency schedules are erratic. Cortisol suppresses the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, Mark, you know that. Anovulatory cycles are completely normal under clinical fatigue."
"Your cycle isn't erratic, Blondie," Mark said evenly, his voice dropping into a low, quiet register that made the hair on the back of her arms stand up. "You run on a twenty-eight-day lunar clock. You get a migraine behind your left temple two days before, you crave salted dark chocolate pretzels, and you leave a heating pad plugged in on the bathroom counter."
Izzie stared at him, her jaw dropping open in sheer, unadulterated shock. "You... you track my period?"
"I am a plastic surgeon, Stevens. I notice structural, hormonal, and volumetric changes in the human body for a living," he said, completely unapologetic. "And as your husband, I pay attention. You were due on Sunday the tenth."
Izzie’s heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped bird. "Sunday? That was... that was four days ago."
"Four days," Mark confirmed softly. "Ninety-six hours."
"That doesn't mean anything! Four days is well within the standard deviation for stress-induced oligomenorrhea! I’ve been running stairs between the ICU and the pit! I haven't been sleeping!"
Mark didn't argue. He reached around behind him, sliding his hand into the pocket of his dark flannel pajama bottoms.
When his hand emerged, he wasn't holding a car key or a money clip.
He set a narrow, rectangular white-and-purple cardboard box down onto the pristine Carrara marble between them.
The bold purple lettering caught the morning light: **CLEARBLUE DIGITAL. ULTRA EARLY DETECTION. 99% ACCURATE.**
Izzie stared at the box as though Mark had just placed an unexploded pipe bomb next to the cinnamon scones. Her vision narrowed to the small illustrated digital display on the packaging showing the word: *PREGNANT*.
"Mark," Izzie whispered, her voice climbing into that high, frantic, bird-like pitch that accompanied her most severe emotional spirals. "Where did you get that? Why do you have that in your pajama pocket?!"
"I bought it at the pharmacy across from the hospital yesterday afternoon," Mark said, his tone infuriatingly calm, though a muscle in his clean-shaven jaw twitched with controlled tension. "Actually, I bought three boxes. Two digital, one standard with the pink lines, just to control for potential false negatives and assay errors."
"You bought nine pregnancy tests at the Seattle Grace pharmacy?!" Izzie gasped, her hands flying to her cheeks. "The pharmacy where Nurse Tyler works? The pharmacy that is the central distribution hub for the entire hospital gossip syndicate?!"
"I used the self-checkout, Stevens, calm down. And Tyler doesn't have the stones to ask me about my retail purchases unless he wants to spend the next six months doing inventory on urinary catheters."
"Mark—"
"Go pee on the stick, Isobel," Mark commanded gently.
He stepped between her knees, his large hands cupping her face, his thumbs gently brushing over the high, flushed apples of her cheeks. His hazel eyes were dark, burning with an intense, immovable gravity that anchored her wild, spinning panic.
"Go to the bathroom. Take the test. We find out together."
Izzie looked up at him, her chest heaving beneath his oversized shirt. Her hands came up to wrap around his wrists, her fingers trembling against his steady, heavy pulse.
"Mark," she whispered, her blue eyes wide, shimmering with an acute, sudden vulnerability that made her throat ache. "What if... what if it’s positive? What if we actually did it?"
A slow, devastatingly tender smile touched the corners of Mark Sloan’s mouth.
"Then term number two of the napkin is fulfilled," he murmured, leaning down to press a soft, lingering kiss to the center of her forehead. "And I become the luckiest bastard in King County. Now go."
***
The master en-suite bathroom in the Queen Anne Victorian was the size of a standard surgical operating theater, lined in warm honey-toned travertine tile, centered around an antique clawfoot soaking tub, and illuminated by a crystal chandelier that threw prismatic teardrops across the steam-free glass.
Izzie sat on the closed lid of the porcelain toilet, her knees pressed tightly together, her hands gripping the edge of the seat. She was still wearing Mark’s gray Henley, her bare toes curled against the heated travertine floor.
On the double-sink marble vanity, resting flat on a white linen hand towel beside an arrangement of fresh eucalyptus, lay the digital pregnancy test.
The tiny hourglass icon on the small liquid-crystal display was blinking with rhythmic, robotic indifference.
*Blink. Blink. Blink.*
Two minutes and forty seconds remained on the internal chemical countdown.
Mark was sitting on the edge of the clawfoot tub opposite her, his long legs stretched out, his elbows resting on his knees. He had discarded his coffee mug downstairs, his hands clasped loosely between his thighs.
He looked remarkably calm to an untrained observer. But Izzie knew his anatomy down to the millimeter now. She saw the tight, microscopic tension in his trapezius muscles. She saw the way his hazel eyes refused to leave that tiny white stick on the vanity. She saw the subtle, rhythmic pulse beating at the base of his throat.
"Two minutes," Izzie whispered into the quiet room. Her voice sounded small, thin, stripped of all resident bravado. "The internal microprocessor takes three minutes to analyze the human chorionic gonadotropin threshold."
"I know how an immunoassay works, Stevens," Mark said softly.
"I know you know. I’m verbalizing to prevent a vasovagal syncope."
"You're not going to faint."
"I might!" Izzie cried, throwing her hands up before dropping them back to her lap, her fingers knotting into the hem of his shirt. "Mark, this is crazy. This is completely, medically, statistically insane. We got married on a drunken bet eighty-four days ago! We wrote a contract on a cocktail napkin because we were mad at our exes! You don't have a baby because of a bar dare!"
"It wasn't a dare, Isobel," Mark said quietly, his voice cutting through her spiraling panic with absolute, heavy clarity. "It was an agreement."
"We're surgeons! We work eighty hours a week! We have clinic, we have rounds, we have trauma rotations! Miranda Bailey will have a stroke, Mark! A literal cerebrovascular accident right on the floor of the surgical pit! She’ll look at my belly, look at you, and she’ll hand me a scalpel and tell me to perform my own emergency appendectomy as punishment!"
"Bailey answers to Richard," Mark said evenly. "And Richard answers to the board. And my trust fund currently funds thirty percent of the hospital’s free pediatric burn clinic. Nobody is touching you. Nobody is benching you. You will do your rotations, you will scrub your cases, and when you’re tired, you will go to my private office and sleep on the leather sofa while I do your paperwork."
Izzie swallowed hard, her eyes stinging with unexpected, prickling heat. "You'd do my charts?"
"I’d forge your signature on fifty discharge summaries if it meant you didn't have to stand on your feet for ten hours," he answered without a beat of hesitation.
The quiet settled over the bathroom again, thick and heavy, broken only by the steady drumming of rain against the high, frosted glass window above the tub.
On the vanity, the little digital hourglass continued to blink.
*Blink. Blink.*
Izzie looked down at her hands, tracing the heavy emerald-cut diamond on her finger. A profound, suffocating weight settled onto her chest—a ghost from a small trailer in Chehalis, Washington, that had haunted the corridors of her memory for over a decade.
"I had a baby, Mark," Izzie whispered, her voice barely louder than the falling rain. "When I was sixteen."
Mark didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He just sat there, listening, giving her the full, unwavering anchor of his presence.
"Hannah," Izzie continued, her throat constricting painfully. "I had no money. I had a mother who spent her welfare checks on psychic hotlines and scratch-off lottery tickets. I was a child. I gave birth in a sterile, freezing county clinic, and I held her for four minutes before the social worker took her away to give her to a family that had a yard, and college funds, and parents who didn't scream at each other in the driveway."
A hot tear spilled over her lashes, tracking down her cheek.
"For ten years, Mark... every time I think about babies, I think about that room. I think about the fact that I wasn't enough. That I was too poor, too stupid, too broken to be a mother. And then Denny died... and I felt like everything I ever touched, everything I ever loved, was destined to be taken away from me because I didn't deserve to have a real life."
Mark moved.
He didn't hesitate. He rose from the tub in one fluid motion, crossed the heated floor, and dropped to his knees directly in front of her.
He took her shaking, cold hands into his large, warm palms, lifting them to his mouth and pressing a firm, lingering kiss to the platinum ring on her finger. He looked up at her, his hazel eyes completely stripped of armor, burning with a fierce, protective reverence that made her breath hitch.
"You are not broken, Isobel," Mark said, his voice rough with emotion, vibrating straight into her core. "You gave that little girl a life because you loved her more than your own comfort. That doesn't make you weak. That makes you extraordinary."
He reached up, his calloused thumbs gently wiping away the wet trails on her cheeks.
"And as for Denny... Denny was a tragedy. But you are alive, Stevens. You fought your way through med school, you paid your own tuition, you survived that trailer park, and you became one of the best damn surgical residents on the West Coast." He paused, his jaw tightening as he swallowed hard. "You deserve a life. You deserve this house. You deserve a family. With someone who is actually here to hold your hand through the messy, terrifying parts."
Izzie let out a ragged, trembling sob, resting her forehead against his, breathing in the scent of his skin, cedar soap, and clean sweat. "Mark..."
"I have a ghost, too, Blondie," Mark whispered against her lips.
Izzie pulled back slightly, her blue eyes wide, searching his face.
The morning light caught the sharp lines around his mouth, the silver threading through his hair, and the deep, lingering shadow of an old, untreated wound behind his hazel irises.
"Addison," Mark said quietly, the name tasting like ash on his tongue.
Izzie’s breath caught. She didn't speak; she simply tightened her fingers around his wrists, grounding him.
"When Derek left New York," Mark began, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly monotone, "after he caught us... he vanished to Seattle. And Addison and I... we stayed together. In that empty, freezing brownstone on the Upper West Side."
He looked toward the travertine floor, his knuckles whitening where his hands rested on her knees.
"We tried to pretend we were a real couple. We tried to convince ourselves that we had committed the ultimate betrayal for something noble. But it was toxic, Izzie. It was guilt, and scotch, and shame. Derek was a ghost in every room. Every time I looked at her, I saw my best friend’s face. Every time she looked at me, she saw the mistake that ruined her marriage."
He let out a short, bitter breath.
"Two months in... Addison missed her period. She took a test. Just like that one on the counter."
Izzie felt her heart twist violently in her chest. "She was pregnant?"
"She was pregnant," Mark confirmed, his voice cracking slightly on the syllable. "With my child."
He looked back up at Izzie, his eyes raw, glistening with a profound, unspeakable sorrow that tore straight through her soul.
"I wanted that baby, Isobel," Mark whispered, his throat bobbing as he fought for composure. "God, you have no idea how much I wanted it. I thought... I thought this was my chance. My redemption. I thought, *Okay, you stole your brother’s wife, you destroyed your family, but now you have an opportunity to be a father. You can give a kid the home you never had. You can be the dad who stays.*"
A single, silent tear broke free from Mark Sloan’s eye, tracing down the rugged plane of his cheek into his stubble.
Izzie had never seen him cry. Not during the worst surgical complications, not when Derek insulted his lineage, not when the entire hospital treated him like a pariah. Seeing him weep now was like watching a monument fracture down the center.
"I bought books," Mark choked out, a faint, agonizing smile touching his lips. "Pediatric development texts. I started looking at houses in Westchester with yards and big trees. I went to the diamond district and looked at rings because I thought I had to do the right thing."
He stopped, his chest heaving as he pulled air into his lungs.
"And then I came home from Mount Sinai on a Tuesday afternoon," he said, his voice barely louder than the hum of the ventilation. "Addison was lying on the sofa. There was an empty water glass, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a prescription for methylergonovine from an OB/GYN clinic in Midtown."
Izzie let out a soft, horrified gasp, her hand flying to her mouth. "Oh, Mark..."
"She didn't tell me," Mark rasped, the old agony bleeding fresh into the room. "She didn't ask. She just went to the clinic between surgical consults and ended it. When I asked her why... she looked at me with those cold, clinical eyes and said, *'Mark, be realistic. We are not parents. We are a disaster. We can't bring a child into this wreckage.'*"
He closed his eyes, his head bowing against Izzie’s knees, his shoulders shaking with a silent, repressed tremor.
"She was right, of course," Mark whispered into the fabric of his Henley. "We were a disaster. But it destroyed me, Izzie. It ripped something out of my chest that I never got back. I packed two duffels, walked out of that brownstone, got on a plane to Seattle, and I spent the next two years sleeping with every nurse, tech, and administrative assistant who looked at me because I wanted to feel numb. Because I convinced myself that Mark Sloan was only built for cheap thrills, fast cars, and empty hotel rooms."
Izzie didn't wait.
She slid off the porcelain seat and dropped directly onto the heated travertine floor beside him.
She threw her arms around his broad, muscular neck, pulling his head down into the hollow of her shoulder. She buried her face into his hair, holding him with an unyielding, ferocious strength, rocking him gently as the tears finally flowed freely down her own face.
"Mark," she sobbed softly against his ear. "Look at me. Look at me, my love."
Mark slowly lifted his head, his face wet, his hazel eyes raw and defenseless.
Izzie framed his jaw with both hands, her thumbs tenderly wiping the moisture from his stubbled skin. She looked into his eyes with that radiant, unbreakable, sunny defiance that had survived trailer parks, poverty, cancer wards, and heartbreak.
"Addison was wrong," Izzie said, her voice clear, fierce, and vibrating with absolute, undeniable truth. "You are not a disaster, Mark Sloan. You are not a wreck. You are kind, you are brilliant, you are loyal down to the bone, and you have the biggest, most generous heart of any man I have ever known in my life."
She leaned in, pressing her lips to his wet cheek, then to his forehead, and finally against his trembling mouth, kissing him with a deep, reverent tenderness that tasted of salt and home.
"You are going to be an incredible father," Izzie whispered against his lips, her hands sliding down to rest flat against his broad, muscular chest, right over his hammering heart. "The kind of father who coaches Little League, and checks for monsters under the bed, and teaches them how to ride a bike with their hands off the handlebars. I know it. I know it in my soul."
Mark stared at her, his breath catching in his throat, his large hands coming up to cover hers against his chest. For a long, suspended moment, the ghosts of New York and Chehalis vanished into the quiet steam of the Queen Anne bathroom, leaving only the two of them—rebuilt, whole, and bound by a promise that was far deeper than any ink on a cocktail napkin.
*Beep.*
The sound was sharp, sterile, and piercing.
The digital timer on the vanity had expired.
The bathroom went dead, suffocatingly still.
Izzie froze. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a jackhammer. She looked at Mark.
Mark didn't move. His hazel eyes were locked onto hers, dark, heavy with an electric, terrifying anticipation that held the weight of their entire shared future.
"It’s time," Mark whispered, his voice steadying, returning to that deep, velvet baritone.
Izzie swallowed hard, nodding slowly. "It’s time."
Together, without releasing each other's hands, they rose from the heated floor.
The travertine was warm beneath their bare feet as they crossed the three paces to the double-sink vanity. The white linen hand towel sat beneath the polished chrome sconces, pristine and unmoving.
Izzie’s breath hitched in her throat. She squeezed Mark’s fingers so hard her knuckles turned white.
"Look," Mark murmured, his other hand coming around her waist from behind, his chest pressing flush against her back, anchoring her trembling frame against his solid heat. "Together, Isobel."
Izzie looked down at the small rectangular plastic stick.
The digital hourglass was gone.
In its place, black, crisp, and permanent against the pale liquid-crystal screen, was a single word:
**PREGNANT**
Beneath it, in smaller, undeniable digital text:
**3+ WEEKS**
The air left Izzie Stevens’s lungs in a sharp, paralyzed gasp. Her hands flew to her mouth, her eyes widening into massive, luminous saucers of pure, unadulterated shock.
"Oh," Izzie choked out, a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. "Oh, my God."
Beside her, Mark went completely rigid.
He didn't speak. He reached out with a trembling hand—the same hand that could dissect microscopic facial nerves with sub-millimeter precision—and carefully, reverently picked up the plastic stick.
He stared at the display. He read the word once. Twice. Three times.
His hazel eyes dilated until the amber rings were almost black. A tremor ran through his broad shoulders, his chest expanding with an enormous, ragged inhale that sounded like a man breaking the surface of the ocean after drowning for years.
"Pregnant," Mark rasped, the word tearing out of him in a breathless, awe-struck whisper. "Isobel... it says pregnant."
"We did it," Izzie sobbed, tears spilling over her lashes in a warm, unstoppable torrent. She turned in his arms, throwing her hands around his neck. "Mark, we did it! There’s a baby! Our baby!"
Mark let out a loud, booming, triumphant laugh that echoed off the high travertine walls, bouncing into the vaulted ceiling of the Victorian.
He dropped the test onto the counter, grabbed Izzie around the waist with both arms, and lifted her completely off her feet, swinging her around in a dizzying circle in the center of the bathroom. Her bare legs wrapped around his hips, her arms locked around his neck, her golden hair tumbling wild and free as they spun together.
"You’re having my baby," Mark growled into her neck, peppering desperate, euphoric kisses across her jaw, her throat, her lips. "You’re pregnant, Stevens! You’re carrying my kid!"
"Your kid!" Izzie laughed through her tears, burying her face into his neck, inhaling the intoxicating scent of him. "A little Sloan! God, Mark, what if it inherits your arrogance?! What if it comes out demanding bespoke cashmere swaddling blankets?!"
"Then I’ll buy the damn cashmere!" Mark roared, setting her feet back down onto the floor, though he didn't release his hold on her.
He dropped to his knees again, right there on the heated tiles.
He gathered the hem of his gray Henley shirt in his hands, gently pushing the fabric up until her bare, pale stomach was exposed to the warm light of the bathroom.
Izzie looked down, her chest heaving, her fingers tangling into his silver-dusted hair.
Mark looked at her stomach. There was no visible swelling yet—just the smooth, soft curve of her abdomen, the faint indentation of her navel, the warm, creamy skin he had kissed a thousand times in the dark.
Slowly, with a breathtaking, holy reverence that brought a fresh wave of tears to Izzie’s eyes, Mark leaned forward.
He pressed his warm cheek flat against her lower belly, his arms wrapping tightly around her hips, pulling her flush against his face. He closed his eyes, inhaling the scent of her skin, listening to the soft, rhythmic hum of her body.
"Hey, little one," Mark whispered against her flesh, his voice thick with tears, vibrating straight through her skin into the microscopic miracle taking root in her womb. "It’s your dad. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere."
Izzie’s heart broke and reassembled itself in the span of a single second. She rested her hands on the top of his head, her fingers stroking through his hair, her chin resting on his broad shoulder as she looked at their reflection in the gilded mirror.
They were a mess.
Her hair was falling down, her mascara was smudged, his jaw was wet with tears, and the digital pregnancy test sat flashing on the marble counter behind them.
They were two surgeons who had met over tequila and bitter grievances in a dive bar eighty-four days ago. They were two broken souls who had drafted a ridiculous, defensive contract on paper cocktail napkins because they were terrified of being discarded again.
And now, the napkins were ashes in the fireplace. The ninety-day trial was obsolete.
There was only this house, this love, and the magnificent, unwritten life growing quietly between them.
"Mark," Izzie whispered softly, her fingers curling over the heavy diamond on her hand.
Mark lifted his head, looking up at her from the floor, his hazel eyes shining with a radiant, incandescent joy that eclipsed every swaggering, arrogant smile he had ever flashed in his entire life.
"Yeah, wife?" he asked, his thumbs gently rubbing the sides of her waist.
"What’s term number one of the napkin agreement again?"
Mark’s mouth curved into a slow, devastating, profoundly beautiful grin.
"Three months of marriage," Mark answered, his voice dropping into a low, velvet hum that echoed with forever. "And then a lifetime renewal."
Izzie smiled through her tears, leaning down to capture his lips in a slow, sweet, unbreakable kiss.
"Contract accepted, Dr. Sloan," Izzie whispered against his mouth. "Contract accepted."