My redemption.
She is the part of me I never let anyone touch until now.
“My heart was a secret searching desperately for someone to tell. A locked vault,” I say, voice low, steady, and certain. The truth hums beneath every word. “And you, Cecilia, are the key I didn’t know I was searching for. I vow to love you, to guard your joy as fiercely as I’ll guard your life. To protect you. To choose you. To stand by your side for the rest of my days.”
Her eyes shine like emerald glass catching the light.
“You are my home,” I breathe. “My whole heart. My every dream made real.”
Her breath hitches—a soft, broken sound that punches straight through the armor I used to call a personality.
The priest clears his throat, trying to steady the moment.
“Do you, Atlas James Stavros, take Cecilia?—”
“I do,” I cut in immediately. “I already have, and if you ask me every damn day, I will always say yes to you.”
She laughs—wet, beautiful, trembling—and the sound feels like absolution.
Then it’s her turn.
Her hands tremble in mine, tiny shakes she tries to hide but can’t.
But her voice doesn’t falter. Not for a second.
She looks up at me like I’m something worth vowing to—like I’m hers to claim.
Please claim me.
“Atlas,” she whispers, but the word wraps around my ribs like silk and wire.
“My heart,” she says, pauses, her breath catching again. “My heart didn’t live before you. It existed, it beat, it survived—but it didn’t live.”
I swallow hard. My grip tightens around her hands, as if anchoring myself.
“You are the man who saw me,” she says, voice trembling but steady. “Who chose me without hesitation. Who ripped down every wall I tried to hide behind and showed me I was worthy of a home. Worthy of love.”
My chest cracks open.
“I vow,” she continues, tears glimmering, “to love you with everything I am. To be your peace when the world makes you a weapon. To be the haven you return to—the home you have always deserved.”
My vision blurs. I blink fast.
“I vow to worship you the way you’ve shown me it’s possible to be worshipped. To never run from the depth of my feelings for you. To stand with you in every storm, every battle, every victory.”
Her thumbs brush the backs of my hands, soft and sure.
“I vow to be your home,” she whispers, voice breaking. “Because you—Atlas—you are mine too.”
I feel it then. That final lock inside me unlatches.
I am undone.
The priest says something—legal, ceremonial, necessary—but I don’t hear any of it.
When we kiss—when I wrap my arms around her waist and lift her clean off her feet to thunderous applause—it isn’t just passion.
It’s possession.
