"Don't make this about my tits," she said, an anxious laugh catching in her throat. "They're going to get old and saggy. They'll be less entertaining, and you won't love them anymore."
"I will love them always. I will loveyoualways." I ran the backs of my fingers along her collarbone. "We don't have to do this if you don't want to. We can go down there, enjoy the music, have some drinks, and—"
"I need to know this won't change anything because I can't do this and then watch it fall apart. I can't be left behind again. I am alone in this world, Sam. I have Ellie, and you, and that's it. I'm afraid I won't survive if you left me."
My arms went around her again, crushing her as a wave of warmth spread out from my chest, down my limbs, around us. I loved this woman harder than I could comprehend. "I regret that this seems to be new information, but nothing will ever keep me from you. Do you believe that?"
Her head bobbed against my chest. "Maybe. Sort of." She looked up, shrugging. "People don't like hanging on to me, Sam. There's a long list of people who have left me, and I'm scared you'll realize I'm not enough of something. I just don't understand why you wantme."
"And I don't understand why you wantme, but let's take the next two weeks and work out some lists. Maybe bullet points starting withI'm a better man because of youand ending withI won't imagine my life without you right here, always, and I'm not fucking leaving you. And something about you being the funniest, sweetest, most beautiful band geek I will ever have the privilege of loving in the middle."
A small smile blossomed on her lips. "My list would start withyou understand me even when I don't understand myself, and end withyou showed me how to love myself and never complain about reminding me when I forget. And something about you wearing a red fucking tuxedo to our wedding, and looking like a hot piece of something very nice doing it."
I leaned down to meet her eyes. "Then come with me now. Come be my wife."
It was a dark, unholy hour when the party finally started winding down, and that was only one of the reasons I was pleased as fucking pie that I got a room for us at the Four Seasons on Boylston. It seemed frivolous to spend this much on a Public-Garden-view suite when I owned a fully decent firehouse on the other side of town but…but we gotmarriedtonight.
Something—everything—about that demanded opulence.
And a guarantee that little brothers wouldn't be barreling in with random questions about the whereabouts of his swim fins, or whether anyone wanted an omelet while the stove was hot.
"This is so fancy," Tiel whispered, squeezing my hand in the elevator.
She glanced at the bellman and back to me, a goofy, slightly drunken grin on her face. The peacock feathers that were once artfully woven into her hair were listing at an odd angle, and her eye makeup was smudged, but all I could see was perfection. I mean, we were both fucked up three ways to Thursday, but this—this night, us, right now—was the start of something good. Something perfect, in its own wildly imperfect ways.
I brought my hand to her face, my palm cupping her cheek while a tight part of me breathed a sigh of contentment as she leaned into me. Edging forward, I pressed my lips to hers for a quick, soft kiss. "You're fancy," I said against her lips. "This dress is gorgeous. And really fucking hot."
The elevator came to a stop, and we followed the bellman down the silent hallway. He was probably bursting with questions. It wasn't as though many people checked in during the earliest hours of Christmas morning, and far fewer showed up in red tuxedos or peacock-inspired dresses with miles of crinoline puffing up the skirts.
So I put fifty dollars in his hand, asked him to hang the Do Not Disturb sign, and engaged the dead bolt and chain. When I turned back to my bride—my wife—she was gazing out at the Garden, her hands braced on the windowsill and her ankles crossed. Shrugging out of my jacket, I smiled, and let the deliciously loose, liquid sensation that belonged to a tangled mess of love, affection, and peace fill my chest and simultaneously ease one form of tension and stoke an entirely different one.
I draped the jacket over the sofa's arm and toed off my shoes, my eyes never leaving Tiel. I walked toward her, wondering what she was thinking as she stared at the grounds below. Her head was cocked to the side, her foot shook in a lazy rhythm, and what did I do right in this life to deserve her?
I didn't know, and I was more than half certain I didn't deserve her at all.
The only reasonable solution to that conundrum was fucking her against the window.
Bow tie, cufflinks, shirt, belt, glucose monitor: off.
Trousers: unbuttoned.
"It's ridiculous to expect a white Christmas," she murmured, inclining her head toward me but not looking over her shoulder. "There's never snow this early. It's always January and February, but there's this huge anticipation for it. All this snowy excitement, as if snow makes a Christmas more valid or something, but when you think about it, it's summer in the southern hemisphere. They don't have white Christmases. It's an irrational expectation propagated by western civilization, right?"
"I'm sure we can blame Dickens for that. We'll get to it when we're back from our honeymoon," I said, my hands resting on her hips. "Did you have a good night, my love?"
"Mmm," she sighed, leaning against me. "It was incredible."
I shifted her hair over her shoulder and dropped my lips to her neck as I unzipped her dress.
I was waiting for some qualification: incredible except for her family's absence; incredible for a thrown-together, last-minute wedding; incredible if we pretended that Lauren didn't drink her weight in shots and challenge the bar boys to arm wrestling contests; incredible aside from the fact that Nick was seen throwing Erin over his shoulder and carting her from the firehouse shortly before we departed.
"Really, really incredible," she said. She reached back and roped her arm around my neck. "I can't believe we did it. We pulled it off. We're married now, Sam. Like…married."
"Having second thoughts?" I asked. I drew the dress down her body, helping her step out of the dark teal silk with subtle hints of gold and silver woven into the delicate lace overlay. It left her in bright pink panties, a matching bra, some off-kilter peacock feathers, and the diamonds I put on her finger.
She threw a sharp glance over her shoulder, shaking her head. "Of course not," she said, her brows furrowed. "Do you think it will be different? Willwebe different?"
"Give me your panties, and we'll find out," I said.
