Sarah (Never-Clip-My-Wings-X) has written an alternative wedding for this fic, which puts me to shame, and fits in if you imagine it follows straight on from Chapter 36, so really it's a double whammy for anyone who's still reading.

This really is the final chapter now (except for Sarah's). Thank you to everyone who's read Bleeding Love for all this time. Please leave a review! x

The Final Chapter

I don't care what they say, I'm in love with you,
They try to pull me away but they don't know the truth,
My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing
~ Leona Lewis, Bleeding Love

Once they'd managed to ferry the congregation away to the coach waiting to take them to the reception – "We'll just be a minute" – Tom sat down on the graveyard wall and pulled Nicki onto his knee, wrapping his arms around her waist and inhaling her warmth.

"Careful," she lectured, straightening her dress. He dug a finger gently into her side and she giggled and turned to kiss him. He could no longer feel her ribs protruding as he ran his hands over her body; she was still slim, the lucky bugger, but not worrying so any more.

"Shouldn't you save your energy for tonight?"

"What are you proposing, Missy?" he ran his fingers through her hair tenderly, then cupped her chin in his palm and pulled her towards him again, kissing her until they'd sucked all of the breath from inside one another.

"Well, a bit of eating, a bit of dancing, a bit more eating. We'd probably better do a bit of socialising, unfortunately," she said, "And maybe, if you've not collapsed by that point, a bit of something naughty."

"Oh, I really must reserve my energy, then. I wouldn't miss us doing something naughty for the world."

"Dad," Josh called from the gate, "Hurry up, the bus driver's getting really upset. Apparently you're three minutes late already and he's on a tight schedule. I think he might have OCD or something."

"Maybe he's just drunk," Tom muttered, "It'd be just our luck for the bus to crash into a ditch before we'd even had our first night together as a married couple."

Nicki slipped down from his knee and took his hands to pull him up off the wall, "I love you, you know."

This was the moment when he said 'I love you too' rather than 'I know'. "I know."

She hit him playfully and linked her arm through his as they walked down the ramp towards the bus. The bus driver seemed to be using an inhaler, and wisps of smoke were leaking out of the door from the sheer amount of party poppers Scout had used. It wouldn't be a Waterloo Road wedding without all of this, would it? And Waterloo Road was what had brought them together, so it was fitting.

He helped Nicki onto the bus and she leant down to kiss his cheek before he climbed on too. Her hand was cool in his; not creepy-cool like doctors' hands often were, when you wondered if they'd just finished examining dead bodies, but nice-cool. Everyone cheered again as they made their way down the bus aisle and settled themselves on the back seats of the bus. Why bother with a fancy car when you could have a bus which had been spray-painted with 'Tom & Nicki 4eva' and a rather lopsided attempt at a stick couple holding hands to transport you instead?

"I'm looking forward to those salmon thingies now," Tom told her, "To keep up my energy and all that."

"Mm, do you think there'll be any chocolate fingers?"

"We're having a buffet with all of the food you could possibly wish for – trifle and cheese straws and strawberry tarts and–"

"And salmon thingies," Nicki added helpfully.

"And salmon thingies – and you're asking about chocolate fingers?"

"Yeah. And that's why you're marrying me."

"Oh, there are a whole host of other reasons why I'm marrying you. Some of them might not be fit for public consumption."

Josh, sitting in the row in front, stuck his head through the crack between two seats and rolled his eyes at them, "You two have just got married and you're arguing about food already. Typical. I'm going to have to soundproof my bedroom or you'll drive me mad deciding what you're going to have for dinner each night."

"You don't really mind me living with you, do you, Josh?"

"I don't have a lot of choice now."

"Oi, cheeky," Nicki stuck her wrist through the gap (skinny wrists, too, Tom's would never have fitted) and ruffled his hair; he wriggled away, grinning and mumbling something about wicked stepmothers.

Everyone piled off the bus once they reached the hotel, squealing about trying to sneak into the spa for free (Janeece) or grumbling about whether there was anywhere in this wretched place where someone could get peace (Grantly). The bus driver climbed down the steps shakily; they watched him out of the window as he took a couple of gulps from his inhaler, before taking a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and smoking as though his heart depended on it. Only in Rochdale.

"You ready, then?" Nicki asked softly.

"Oh, I'm never ready to deal with these lot."

"Just think about afterwards when the going gets tough."

"What, once we go to the bedroom, you mean?" he asked, feigning innocence as she leant into him and he kissed the top of her head, causing some strands of her hair to come free of their fastenings and fall down over her face. She looked even more beautiful like that, her vulnerability shining through, the imperfect. Because they were all imperfect, and he loved her for her flaws; love was like that, it was all encompassing.

Jesus, he wasn't even drunk yet and he was already throwing cringey clichés around like Cupid's arrows.

She held out her hands to him and he slipped his fingers between hers. The scars on her wrists were visible, like this, little worms that had once buried into her and forced themselves inside her heart. Now she was healing again, but the scars would always be there, they'd always be a reminder of her suffering. It was good to be reminded, sometimes, so that you didn't forget the things – the places, the people, the memories – that had made you. Without Jess and Lucy and Kieran and her parents, without Waterloo Road, Nicki would not have become to the person she was today.

"I love you," she said.

"I love you too, baby."

They hugged, and stayed locked together for a long time, until Nicki carefully extracted herself from his embrace.

"We should probably–" she nodded towards the front of the bus.

"Do we have to?"

"They'll have salmon thingies."

"Oh, go on, then."

Tom's heart swelled with pride for the person he loved more than anything in the world aside from his son, and for how much she'd changed. He remembered carrying Nicki from the toilets all of those months ago, the way her watery blue eyes had begged him to help her, his heart breaking for the pain she was in. He remembered the tears that had been shed by each of them throughout their friendship, the times he'd thought that they could never be together, that it was just too difficult. He remembered the first time they'd kissed.

And he thought that it was worth it, all of the terrible things they'd been through together, to get to this point.

"I don't care what they say," Nicki whispered, "I'm in love with you."

"Oh, aren't you romantic, Boston? Irresistibly so," he mumbled into her hair, unable to stop himself from grinning like a monkey presented with a crate full of bananas for his birthday, "Hang on, is that from a song?"

She nodded apologetically, "I was hoping you wouldn't realise."

"I thought it was all a little bit too good to be true."

They climbed off the bus and Tom caught her by surprise, wrapping his arms around her waist and spinning her round in front of the hotel so that her dress spun out around them like they were performing a Russian ballet. When he finally put her down he realised that he could barely breathe; Nicki, her confetti-littered hair now spilling down around her face, flushed with laughter as he bent over, gulping in air.

"I'm not that heavy."

"No. You're that beautiful, though." He didn't give a damn how cheesy it sounded any more. It was true. "You're the most beautiful girl in the world."

"Agreed," the bus driver wheezed between stamping on one cigarette and taking another from the nearly-empty packet, his eyes settling on Nicki's chest and remaining there, "Listen, love, I don't suppose there's any of those little salmon thingies going spare inside? Perhaps a bit of wine?"

Nicki mouthed 'oh, God' at Tom. He smirked, then took his wife's hand and led her inside to join the chaos that was Waterloo Road at a party. There was genuinely nowhere else in the world he'd rather be.

THE END