Nan will be at the wedding. She will sit near the aisle on the outside end where she can stand first if she chooses. If Caterinalooks at her and says “help,” my grandmother will take her hand and walk. I gave my word by taking the bands; that was the price. I won’t repay it with spite.
But I don’t plan to test it.
Caterina said no to black just to tell me she could. Good. I like the fight in her. I like the way she holds a line once she draws it. I’ll work around the edges of that line until we decide where it moves and where it doesn’t.
That’s marriage.
Not the story they give you from the pulpit—the real thing. The one with locked doors and shared words and a house that grows around the people in it instead of trapping them.
If Blackvine shows up at my door in any guise, I open it and pull them inside where no one can see what happens next. If they whisper her name to test my temper, they learn what a quiet man does when you teach him to hate and then put a saint in front of him and tell him he can have the sun.
Nan thinks she can get Caterina to a car and out a back gate if the girl asks. Maybe. Good for Nan. I respect an exit plan. I respect being the person who holds it.
Me? I’m not letting Caterina go. Not to priests, not to cousins, not to ghosts who think they deserve more of her than I do because they knew her before I did. Not to Blackvine. Especially not to them.
I text her, because I want to and need to, and honestly I couldn’t stop myself.
Me:Bring a coat. It’ll be cold on the steps.
I leave it at that. She doesn’t need me to narrate the rest. She already knows the difference between a man who wants to wear her like a medal and a man who’s built to stand outside her door and keep the monsters from knocking.
I’ll be her monster. She doesn’t need to worry about any others.
The car turns down Tremont, then into the narrow street that leads to St. Brigid’s. The towers look like they’ve been expecting us. They always do.
I touch the inside pocket once more, check the bands with my fingers, and think about my grandmother promising safe haven at my own wedding like a woman who raised wolves and loves sheep and knows that both have teeth.
Let her make the promise. Let Caterina hear it.
It won’t change our ending.
I married this girl the second she put her hand in mine in the dark and pulled in a breath like I’d given her the air. Everything else is names on paper and a priest with a book.
They can all show up and make it official. Nan can come to watch, ready to run interference. Blackvine can send messages, watchers, invitations I won’t accept. The state can stamp their approval. The families can smile for photographs they’ll pretend to forget.
I’m not letting Caterina get away from me.
11
CATERINA
Cayce:Tonight: think about you on your knees and my hand under your jaw, lifting your chin. Be a good girl and remember how I make you breathe.
Caterina:Bossy. I have a class and the professor’s looking at me.
If I hadn’t been raisedmy entire life to honor patience and portray purity and innocence, I’d be screaming right now.
Instead, I count the windows around me like I haven’t had them memorized for years.
Late afternoon light slants through the high windows of St. Brigid’s and turns the dust into quiet confetti. The altar is bare except for a white runner and a pair of brass candle stands that look like they’ve been here since the parish was more Irish than English. Aoife’s clipboard sits on the front pew like a small general. Tiernan is a darker shape by the side door, running a finger along the seam of the molding as if he’s checking it for sins.
Cayce stands at the top of the aisle with his hands in his pockets and his attention on me. Not the room, not the mentrickling in to pretend we all understand the choreography—me. It feels like being chosen for a game I didn’t agree to play. It feels like being watched by a man who thinks “watching” is a form of keeping.
“Hello, little saint,” he says when I reach him, his gaze running over me. It doesn’t sound like a nickname. It sounds like a fact he has decided.
“Rehearsal,” I answer, because my mouth needs something to do. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“That’s why Aoife’s here,” he says, deadpan. “To prevent homicide by pew and tell us what to do and when.”
