Updated Apr 16, 2026 • ~14 min read
Chapter 29: Honeymoon
Luna
Luna wakes up in Munich on the first morning of their honeymoon to Sofia jumping on the hotel bed between her and Matthias, shouting “WE’RE IN GERMANY!” with the kind of unbridled enthusiasm that only a four-year-old experiencing her first international trip can achieve, and even though it’s barely six in the morning and Luna’s body is still on New York time, she can’t help but laugh at her daughter’s excitement.
“Yes, we are,” Matthias confirms, catching Sofia mid-bounce and pulling her into a hug. “We’re in Munich. This is where Daddy grew up.”
“Can we see castles?” Sofia asks with the immediate subject change that characterizes all her conversations. “Grandma Helene said there are castles here!”
“Tomorrow,” Luna promises, reaching over to smooth Sofia’s curls that are wild from sleep and bouncing. “Today we’re going to see the city. And eat pretzels.”
“BIG pretzels?” Sofia asks, eyes widening.
“Enormous pretzels,” Matthias confirms. “Bigger than your head.”
Sofia giggles at this concept and scrambles off the bed to look out the window at Munich spread below them—their hotel overlooks the Marienplatz, the historic city center with its famous Glockenspiel and medieval architecture, and Luna watches her daughter press her face against the glass and marvel at buildings that are older than their entire country.
“It’s so pretty!” Sofia announces. “Daddy, your home is pretty!”
“This was my home,” Matthias corrects gently, coming to stand beside Sofia at the window. “But home is in Brooklyn now. With you and Mama. This is just where I’m from.”
Luna’s heart swells watching them together—her husband and her daughter, silhouetted against the Munich skyline, and the fact that she gets to call Matthias her husband now still feels surreal and perfect and exactly right.
They’ve been married for three days.
Three days of being Luna Wolfe instead of Luna Vega, of wearing her wedding ring and introducing Matthias as her husband and watching Sofia tell everyone who’ll listen that “Mama and Daddy got married and I was the flower girl!”
The wedding was perfect—small and intimate and exactly what they wanted, with Sofia stealing the show by dumping all her flower petals in one spot and then skipping the rest of the way down the aisle, and Luna standing under the flower arch watching Matthias cry during his vows, and the kiss that Sofia interrupted with her enthusiastic “KISS NOW!” command that made everyone laugh.
And now they’re in Germany for two weeks—part honeymoon, part family vacation, part introduction to Sofia’s heritage on her father’s side.
“Breakfast first,” Luna decides, herding them away from the window. “Then we’ll explore the city.”
Breakfast in the hotel restaurant is an adventure—Sofia fascinated by the continental European spread, insisting on trying everything from Weisswurst to Leberkäse to approximately seventeen different kinds of bread, while Matthias translates menu items and explains German breakfast customs and looks so genuinely happy to be sharing this part of his culture with them that Luna falls in love with him all over again.
“This is weird,” Sofia declares, examining a piece of Weisswurst with suspicion. “What is it?”
“White sausage,” Matthias explains. “Traditional Bavarian breakfast. You eat it with sweet mustard.”
Sofia takes a cautious bite, chews thoughtfully, then announces “I like it!” before devouring the entire sausage and asking for another one, and Matthias beams with pride that his daughter appreciates German food.
After breakfast they walk through Munich’s old town—Matthias pointing out landmarks from his childhood, the church where his family attended Christmas mass, the school he went to before being sent to boarding school in Switzerland, the beer garden where he had his first (illegal, underage) beer with friends—and Luna watches her husband transform from the controlled CEO she first knew into someone younger and more open, sharing stories and memories and parts of himself he’s never shown her before.
“There,” Matthias says, pointing to a fountain in a small square. “That’s where I had my first kiss. I was fourteen, she was the mayor’s daughter, and it was terrible.”
“Terrible how?” Luna asks, laughing.
“Too much enthusiasm, zero technique,” Matthias admits. “I basically headbutted her with my face and called it kissing.”
Sofia, who’s been listening with the intensity of someone gathering information, asks “Mama, was Daddy a good kisser when you met?”
Luna chokes on laughter while Matthias looks mortified that their four-year-old is asking about their first kiss, and she decides to answer diplomatically.
“Much better than fourteen-year-old Daddy, apparently,” Luna says. “He’d had time to practice.”
“Did you practice kissing too?” Sofia asks with genuine curiosity, and Matthias mutters something in German that Luna doesn’t understand but assumes is prayer for patience.
“Come on, sweetheart,” Matthias says, changing the subject with desperate efficiency. “Let’s go find those giant pretzels I promised.”
The pretzels are indeed enormous—bigger than Sofia’s head as promised, fresh from a street vendor, warm and salted and absolutely delicious—and they eat them while walking through the Viktualienmarkt, the famous open-air food market, where Sofia marvels at flower stalls and cheese vendors and somehow convinces Matthias to buy her a traditional Bavarian hat with a feather that she wears for approximately ten minutes before declaring it “itchy” and making Luna carry it.
Lunch is at a traditional beer garden—Matthias insisting they experience authentic Bavarian culture, which apparently involves sitting at long communal tables, ordering liters of beer (and apple juice for Sofia), and eating schnitzel the size of dinner plates while strangers toast each other and a brass band plays oompah music in the background.
“This is weird,” Sofia announces again, but she’s smiling and dancing in her seat to the brass band music and charming the elderly German couple sitting across from them who keep offering her bites of their pretzels and calling her “Liebling.”
“What’s Liebling?” Sofia asks Matthias.
“It means darling,” Matthias translates. “They think you’re adorable.”
“I am adorable,” Sofia agrees with the confident self-awareness of a four-year-old who’s been told she’s cute her entire life, and the German couple laughs and Luna decides that even though this is chaotic and loud and overwhelming, it’s perfect—exactly the kind of family experience she wants Sofia to have, the kind of memory that will shape her understanding of where she comes from.
In the afternoon, Sofia crashes hard—the jet lag and excitement catching up with her—so they head back to the hotel for nap time, and Matthias carries their sleeping daughter through the Munich streets while tourists take photos (apparently a tall handsome man carrying a child while his wife walks beside him is very picturesque) and Luna thinks about how much their lives have changed in one year.
One year ago, Matthias was just her boss—the man who’d ghosted her four years prior, the father Sofia didn’t know she had.
Now he’s her husband, Sofia’s daddy, the person she trusts more than anyone except Carmen, the man who bought them a house with a yard and princess castle bedroom and proposed with their daughter’s help and cried during his wedding vows.
Back at the hotel, Matthias puts Sofia down for her nap in the adjoining room—their suite has two bedrooms, because even on their honeymoon they’re parents first—and Luna watches him tuck their daughter in with such gentle care that her heart aches with how much she loves this man.
“She’s out,” Matthias reports, coming back to their bedroom and closing the door quietly behind him. “Probably for at least two hours based on how hard she was running this morning.”
“Good,” Luna says, and she’s suddenly very aware that they’re alone for the first time since the wedding, that this is technically their honeymoon even though they brought Sofia with them, that Matthias is looking at her with the kind of heat that makes her breath catch.
“Come here,” Matthias says, and it’s not a request but a command—the voice he uses in the bedroom that makes Luna’s knees weak—and she crosses to him immediately.
He kisses her with the kind of intensity that’s been building since the wedding, since they said their vows and became husband and wife officially, and Luna kisses back with equal passion, her hands already working on the buttons of his shirt because they have two hours and she intends to use every minute.
“My wife,” Matthias murmurs against her mouth, and the possessiveness in his voice combined with the word “wife” makes Luna shiver with want.
“My husband,” Luna responds, and she likes how it sounds, likes claiming him the way he’s claiming her.
They make love in the afternoon light streaming through the Munich hotel windows, and it’s different from their first time four years ago—not the desperate passion of strangers but the deep intimacy of people who know each other completely, who’ve built a life together, who’ve chosen each other over and over again and finally made it permanent.
“I love you,” Matthias says afterwards, holding Luna against his chest while they both catch their breath. “So much. Sometimes I still can’t believe this is real.”
“It’s real,” Luna confirms, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “We’re married. We have a daughter. We’re a family.”
“Family,” Matthias echoes, and there’s wonder in his voice like he’s still adjusting to the concept of belonging to people, of being chosen, of having this kind of permanent connection.
They doze for a while in the post-sex haze, and Luna thinks about how far they’ve come—from one night stand to secret baby to custody negotiations to falling in love all over again to marriage and honeymoon and forever.
Sofia wakes them up two hours later by jumping on their bed again (she has a thing about jumping on hotel beds, apparently) and announcing she’s hungry, and Matthias takes them to dinner at his favorite childhood restaurant—a cozy traditional place where the owner recognizes him immediately and makes a huge fuss about meeting his wife and daughter, bringing out special desserts and insisting on toasting their marriage with schnapps that makes Luna’s eyes water.
The next day they go to Neuschwanstein—the famous fairy-tale castle that looks like something from a Disney movie—and Sofia loses her mind with excitement, insisting she’s a princess and this is her castle and can they please move here permanently.
“Daddy, we live here now?” Sofia asks, spinning in circles in front of the castle while tourists take photos and Matthias laughs at their daughter’s dramatics.
“Just visiting, sweetheart,” Matthias says gently, crouching down to Sofia’s level. “Home is where we’re all together.”
“But this is so pretty!” Sofia protests, gesturing at the castle with the kind of passionate conviction only a four-year-old can achieve about architecture.
“It is pretty,” Luna agrees, taking Sofia’s hand. “But our house in Brooklyn is pretty too. And it has your princess castle room that Daddy painted, remember?”
“And Mr. Elephant,” Sofia adds, referring to her favorite stuffed animal who’s currently tucked in her backpack. “Mr. Elephant would miss Brooklyn.”
“Exactly,” Matthias says, and he winks at Luna over Sofia’s head because they’ve successfully redirected the moving-to-Germany conversation with toy-based logic.
They tour the castle—Sofia enchanted by every room, asking approximately five hundred questions about who lived here and did they have a little girl and can she please have a tower bedroom at home—and Matthias patiently answers every question while Luna takes approximately one thousand photos because this is the kind of family memory she wants to preserve forever.
The rest of the week passes in a blur of German experiences—more beer gardens and pretzels, a day trip to the Alps where Sofia sees snow for the first time and immediately tries to build a snowman despite it being late spring and the snow being mostly melted, a visit to Matthias’s childhood home where his mother has actually prepared a warm welcome instead of the cold reception Luna expected.
“She’s trying,” Matthias explains when Helene gives Sofia a vintage German doll from her own childhood and actually smiles while doing it. “She’s not good at emotions or warmth, but she’s trying to be a grandmother. For Sofia.”
And Luna watches Helene teach Sofia basic German phrases, watches the older woman’s face soften when Sofia calls her “Oma” for the first time, watches the tentative connection forming between grandmother and granddaughter, and thinks that maybe family isn’t just about blood or obligation but also about choosing to try, choosing to change, choosing to love even when it’s uncomfortable.
On their last night in Germany, after Sofia is asleep and they’re packing for their flight home tomorrow, Matthias finds Luna standing on their hotel balcony looking out at the Munich skyline.
“Penny for your thoughts, Mrs. Wolfe?” he asks, wrapping his arms around her from behind.
“Just thinking about how much has changed,” Luna says, leaning back against his chest. “A year ago I was terrified of you. Terrified you’d take Sofia away from me. Terrified you’d break our hearts. And now we’re married and on our honeymoon and you’ve given Sofia this amazing experience of her heritage. I never imagined this.”
“I never imagined any of this either,” Matthias admits. “I thought I’d be alone forever. Married to work. No family, no connections, just business and money and empty success. And then I found you again. Found out about Sofia. Got a second chance at the life I didn’t even know I wanted.”
“Are you happy?” Luna asks, turning in his arms to look at his face.
“Happier than I’ve ever been,” Matthias says without hesitation. “You and Sofia—you’re everything. My family. My home. My whole world.”
“Forever?” Luna asks, and she’s teasing but also serious, checking that this is real, that he’s not going to wake up one day and regret choosing domestic life over bachelor freedom.
“Forever and ever,” Matthias promises, kissing her forehead. “Just like I promised Sofia when I asked permission to marry you. Forever and ever, Luna. You’re stuck with me now.”
“Good,” Luna says, and she kisses him properly, pouring all her love and trust and gratitude into it. “Because I’m not letting you go. Not again. Not ever.”
They fly home to Brooklyn the next day—Sofia chattering nonstop about castles and pretzels and how she’s going to tell everyone at school about Germany when kindergarten starts in the fall—and when they arrive at their house, the house Matthias bought for their family, Luna feels a wave of overwhelming rightness.
This is home.
Not Munich or Manhattan or anywhere else.
This house, with Sofia’s toys scattered across the living room and photos from the wedding on the mantle and Matthias’s shoes kicked off by the door and the comfortable mess of actual family life instead of staged perfection.
“Home,” Sofia announces, running inside and immediately locating Mr. Elephant where she’d left him before the trip. “We’re home!”
“We are,” Matthias agrees, pulling Luna close and watching their daughter reunite with her stuffed animal like they’ve been apart for years instead of two weeks. “We’re home.”
And Luna thinks about their journey—from one night stand to secret baby to enemies to co-parents to lovers to married couple to family—and realizes that home isn’t a place at all.
Home is this.
Matthias and Sofia and the life they’ve built together.
Home is choosing each other every single day.
Home is forever.
And Luna has never been happier to be home in her entire life.
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