Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 83355 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83355 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Hunter is first to speak. His voice is the kind of quiet that makes everyone lean in.
“Stella,” he says, “from the moment you stormed into my life, I knew there was no going back. You’re the only thing in this world that makes me want to be a better man, and the only person who could ever get away with talking to me the way you do. You are my obsession, my joy, my daily addiction. There is not a part of you I don’t crave, body and soul. And I swear to spend the rest of my life giving you everything you want, and then some. Even if it kills me. Especially if it kills me.”
He takes my hand, and the pressure of his fingers is a promise.
Lachlan goes next, his voice rough and a little unsteady, as if it has to travel a great distance to reach the present.
“I’ve never belonged anywhere,” he says, looking past me, then right into my eyes. “Never knew what it meant to be home. Until you. You make me want things I thought I’d buried, and you show me a mercy I don’t deserve. I want to be the man you think I am, every day, for as long as you’ll have me. You’re sacred to me, Stella, and I vow to worship you, protect you, and sin with you, over and over, until there’s nothing left but the memory of us.”
He takes my other hand, and for a moment I am held upright by the strength of them, by the truth of what they’ve just said.
Now, it’s my turn. I should be nervous, but I’m not. The words come out in a rush, like I’ve been holding them my entire life.
“I used to think I was broken,” I say. “Too much for anyone, or not enough. But with you two, I’m not broken. I’m just the right kind of wild, and you’ve never tried to tame me. I want you both—always, at the same time, every hour, every minute. I love you so much I’d burn down the world for you, or let you burn it down around me. I’m not afraid of the darkness, as long as you’re in it with me. I’m yours, Hunter. I’m yours, Lachlan. I always have been. I always will be.”
I hear a sound—maybe a sob, maybe a laugh—from the front row, and I glance over to see Andie with her fist pressed to her mouth, her eyes glistening. Next to her, Thomas hasn’t moved, but his face is proud. I hope he’s proud, at least. Kayleigh is openly crying, and Mary Kate’s hand is clamped so tight on Chloe’s arm I think the girl might faint.
There’s no officiant. No one to say “by the power vested in me.” No priest, no bishop, not even a notary. It’s just the three of us, and the garden, and the wisteria, and the candlelight, and the air so thick with jasmine you could get drunk on it.
Hunter slides the first ring onto my left ring finger. The band is warm, the metal heavier than it should be, and as it clicks home I feel my hand tremble. The engraving presses against my skin: SEMPER FIDELIS. Lachlan does the same, his ring fitting on my right ring finger, the two patterns aligning, catching the light. Perfect, as aways.
The guests don’t clap. They don’t have to. The moment is sealed by the hush, by the way the world shrinks to the space between our hands, by the slow, deliberate way Hunter brings my palm to his mouth and kisses it, and the way Lachlan pulls me in with an arm around my waist and holds me there, tight, like he’s afraid I might slip away if he ever lets go.
I glance back at the crowd, and my mother is sobbing, happy, her tears shining in the gold of dusk.
It is done. We are married, or whatever the world will let us call it. There’s no blessing, just the three of us, standing before a simple altar in a garden that smells like gardenia and sugar and something ancient.
In the darkening blue, the fairy lights come on all at once, and for a second, I think I can see the whole future lit up ahead of me.
I want to run into it, never stop.
Afterward, the garden empties the way a lake empties of swimmers: sudden, anticlimactic, the surface barely rippling with evidence of what just happened. The cellist packs up, the glasses get cleared, the chairs are stacked and carted away by men in all-black. There’s a moment in the hush where it almost feels like none of it was real, like I’ve stumbled into a dream where my mother sobbed through an entire wedding and my father hugged me so long afterwards I thought he might snap my spine.