My chest squeezes. Family. How it grows in directions you never plan.
“Stop,” Briar orders, blotting the corner of my eye with a tissue. “You’ll ruin your eye makeup. He’s going to lose his mind when he sees you.”
“He always loses his mind,” I say, fearless for once. “So do I.”
She hands me the bouquet—simple winter greens, white hellebore, baby’s breath that glints like frost, and mountain honeysuckle. The stems are wrapped in blue satin that once belonged to my mother; it feels like a hand at the small of my back, steadying. I look up, past candles and light and faces I love, and the clearing blurs into something holy: the officiant waiting with an open book; the arch Axel built out of reclaimed wood we salvaged from my family’s old foundation; the narrow aisle cut with boots this afternoon; the flare of quote cards pinned to the trees with clothespins—lines from letters he wrote and never sent, fluttering like prayer flags.
Movement near the arch flicks like heat in my peripheral vision. He steps out from the trees and my breath stops.
Oh.
Axel in that dress uniform is unfair. Dark blue tailored over broad shoulders, white shirt, black tie, polished badge catching pinpricks of fire. His cap sits wrong because his hair refuses to be tamed and I want to kiss the stubborn out of him. Wind brushes his jaw; the muscle there flexes. When he finds me he stops walking—just stops—like he’s the one who got the wind knocked out of his chest.
The world tilts.
A hand slides into mine. “I’ll take you to him,” a warm voice says, and I look into Briar’s determined face.
“You’re the maid of honor and the escort?” I whisper.
“I’m also the ring security,” she informs me severely. “And the petal captain.”
“Big job.”
“Uh-huh.” She tucks her hand tighter in mine. “Are you nervous?”
“Only in the good ways.”
Music lifts—strings and a low drum roll someone snuck into the playlist. Lantern light trembles. Petals hit the aisle.Too manypetals hit the aisle, because Holly takes one look at me and starts flinging them like confetti from a parade float, and the crowd laughs, and the cold bites my cheeks, and Axel smiles—slow, helpless, wrecked—like he’d burn for me a thousand times just to see me walk toward him once.
Each step settles something that’s been loose in me since sixteen. Not a fairy tale. Not a fix. A vow. The kind you build with splinters in your palms, shoulders aching, eyes open. I reach the front and Holly deposits the final fistful of petals directly on my shoes with a satisfied,handledface, then trots to Ash’s side.
Axel offers his hand. I give him mine. His palm is warm, rough. The calluses scrape just enough to spark.
“Hi, paramedic,” he says, voice low for me alone.
“Hi, firefighter.”
His mouth tilts. “You came.”
“I always do,” I whisper. “Eventually.”
He exhales, that soft, ruined breath he saves for when I say what he needed to hear without asking, and for a second I feel it in my bones—how we’re going to do this for decades. The officiant welcomes the crowd. The river answers in its own language. The sky bruises deeper into indigo. Axel’s thumb strokes the inside of my wrist, a private vow.
“Dearly beloved,” the officiant begins, and Levi fake-sobs in the second row until Dax elbows him hard enough to make his chair scoot.
There’s a bit about love being a verb, about weathering and wonder and work. There’s a passage Axel chose from some article he keeps folded in his wallet—something about choosing each other being not a moment but a practice, not a landing but a path. I hear words about flame and shelter and the danger and beauty of heat when it’s contained by care. The crew stands straighter at that; it’s a sermon they understand.
Then the officiant nods at us. “Your vows.”
We decided to speak them without paper. I open my mouth, and my past is suddenly a bright, hard thing being held in gentle hands. I see the narrow hallway where my father put me behind him and went back, the way his shoulders never turned. I see sixteen-year-old Axel standing barefoot on the frozen lawn, shouting my name into smoke until it swallowed his voice. I see the letters he wrote,so many letters,all unsent.
He lifts our joined hands to his mouth and kisses my knuckles once; it breaks whatever dam was threatening to make me quiet.
“Axel,” I say, and his name is my balance. “I won’t call you my hero tonight. You’ve been enough of those for other people. I’ll call you mine—my partner, my harbor, my stubborn, impossible home. I promise to be the one who drags you into bed whenyou’re bone-tired, to run you cold water when the heat won’t quit, to remind you that rest is brave. I promise to keep choosing you with my hands and my voice and the boring Tuesday morning parts of my soul. I promise to put my boots next to yours at the door and my head on your shoulder when the walls won’t stop talking. I promise to keep lighting the porch. Come home to me.”
His eyes shine and I have to take a quick, steadying breath. He nods once, like the wordless version ofcopy that, I’m on my way.
He doesn’t glance at paper either. “Savannah,” he says, voice rough enough to hitch against my ribs, “you were my first shot of adrenaline and my last prayer. I thought I could out-stubborn the ache of you. I couldn’t. I promise to build with you—walls and shelves and a peace we earned. I promise to listen, especially when you say you’re fine and your hands are shaking. I promise to carry weight when your back needs rest and hand it back when you sayput me down, Ramirez, I can walk.I promise to try first, apologize faster, and stand in front of the heat but never between you and the sky. You’re my yes. Every day, you’re my yes.”
