"Warn me the next time you want to love me that hard," I said, my voice raspy.
"No, I don't think I will," she said, stroking a hand through my hair, down my neck and shoulders.
"I fucking love you," I said. "I need you to know that if you leave me again, I'll just go and steal you back. Some people might call it kidnapping, but I don't care. It doesn't matter what your parents say. I don't care if they disinherit you or whatever the fuck else they come up with. You're mine—and nothing's going to change that."
"I'm not going to leave you." She laughed as she said this, and since I was still buried inside her, the force of it nearly split my spine. "I'm not going anywhere. We've waited too long and lost too much. I came here because I didn't want to give up even a day with my boys."
I brought my hands to her face, pressed a slow kiss to her lips. "Our family can be anything we want it to be," I said. "Marriage, adoption—those are legal issues. We don't have to bother ourselves with them. You can be a mother to Percy without a court saying so. I'll be your husband right now or in twenty years when you feel ready to hear that word again. It's up to us. We decide. We make our own rules."
She touched her forehead to mine, nodding just a bit. "I'd like that."
"Me too. Like you wouldn't believe." I leaned to the side—no easy feat in this position—and hooked a finger inside my travel case. "This belongs to you," I said, popping her not-fake engagement ring from the box. "It doesn't mean we're engaged. I'm not trying to push you into anything. It just means that I hold your heart in my heart, and you hold mine. Is that okay?"
"I think I'd like that very much." She held out her hand and I slipped it on her ring finger. "I still can't believe you remembered all the exact little details."
"I've been waiting a long time to be yours again. It gave me something to do."
She started to respond, but a knock sounded—and then the door opened. "Oh shit," she gasped. "What do we do? Jude!What do we do?"
I yanked a towel from the shower door handle and did an adequate job of wrapping it around my waist. That was the best option available. "I'm just having a conversation in here with Audrey," I called over my shoulder. "Could you give us a minute, buddy? We'll be right out unless it's an emergency."
I held my breath until he pulled the door shut. When we were alone again, I sagged into her. "Holy fuck. That was close."
"That wasreallyclose," she said, rubbing my shoulders.
"We're going to have to work on this," I said.
"We have time," Audrey said.
epilogue
Audrey
Next October
Today's vocabulary word: reprise
"Is this—"Jude traced the strap of my blue bridesmaid dress as I touched up my lip color. "This is the same dress as last summer. From Emme's wedding."
"Yeah." I caught his eye in the mirror. "We've had them since Shay's wedding. Well, her first wedding. Which she didn't go through with. That's a different story, but when it came time for Grace's wedding, she figured it made sense to go with the same dresses. It saves everyone a little money too, since these things are horribly expensive."
"I can understand that," he said, now sliding a finger under the strap.
"It's not like anyone actually gets to wear a bridesmaid dress again otherwise so, why not? Then we just kept it going for Emme's wedding and now we're putting them to use once again."
He edged the strap down my shoulder. I swatted him away. "Will this be the last time?"
"I'd say yes, but anything could happen," I said. "It's kind of fun that we have this little tradition. Most people don't notice that we've worn the same dresses, wedding to wedding. It's like having an open secret."
Jude considered this while I fussed with a few loose strands of hair. My ring caught the warm light of the afternoon sun through the mirror, casting my hand in a watery violet glow. We had a lovely "wedding" reception in Sedona in February. As Jude predicted, Janet cared little for the particulars of this union. So long as she was allowed to put on a big party and tell her friends that we werea new version of married, it was all the same to her.
"All right, princess," he said, leaning in to press a kiss to my shoulder. "You don't need me pawing at you. I'll be outside, keeping the kids as clean as possible before the ceremony."
"That's a funny way of saying you're going to find Noah and Ben, get some beers, and talk about chainsaws and ride-on lawn mowers."
"I'm sure you know that Percy and Gennie will swipe a corner off that cake the first chance they get," he said. "They're trouble enough on their own, but together—" He punched a fist into the opposite palm. "They're basically a hit squad."
This…was not an exaggeration. But it was also one of my favorite things in the world. I loved the version of Percy that we saw when he was here in Friendship. There was a joyful fearlessness to him that I couldn't get enough of.
