He doesn’t wipe the tear that breaks free and slides down my cheek; he watches it like a witness, like he’ll remember exactly where it fell. The officiant nods, satisfied, moved, practical. “Rings,” he says.
Holly puffs up, marches forward, and opens the little wooden box with an exaggerated flourish that makes the crowd laugh again. Ash mouthsnice workand she preens.
Axel takes my ring and slides it home with steady hands, a soft exhale hitting my knuckles. The band catches the last shred of twilight and turns it into a thin line of fire. I take his and push it onto his finger, watching how it settles against his skin like it recognizes where to stop.
“By the power vested in me by the state of Colorado and a committee of firefighters who threatened to foam my front yard if I declined,” the officiant says dryly, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” He grins. “Kiss your bride before Dax throws a shoe.”
Axel doesn’t hurry. He steps in like a man walking through a door he built, slides his hand up into my hair, and tilts my face. The world tightens to the size of his mouth and the heat under my ribs. He kisses me slowly. Reverent. Like he practices gentleness because it used to be hard for him and now it’s a thing he’s proud to be good at. My shoulder blades hit his palm, my spine arches, the crowd blurs into stars.
Somewhere in the background, someone wolf-whistles; someone shushes them. I taste winter and cedar and Axel, and the rest of my life lines up like candles along this aisle, one after another, waiting for a match.
He pulls back a fraction, breath mingling with mine. “Mrs. Ramirez,” he murmurs, testing it.
“Say it again,” I whisper, drunk on him.
“Mrs. Ramirez,” he repeats.
Cheers crack like kindling. I turn and the sea of faces hits me—the crew, my people, our town, eyes bright, happy, curious. Levi is in fact crying without shame. Dax is smug. Captain Cole stands stiff, proud, softer than he’ll ever admit. Ash lifts Holly into the air and she scatters the last of her petals right over our heads like a blessing we didn’t know we could ask for.
We walk back down the aisle under a canopy of raised axes—polished and crossed into an arch the crew made without telling me, a firefighter tradition I’ve seen but never wanted until now. Metal glows in lantern light. Boots thump in rhythm. Each pair of crossed blades lifts just enough as we pass.
The clearing becomes a party in the way mountain parties do—small, loud, full of food and bad dancing and kids running inloops until they drop. Tables hold trays of barbecue and winter salads and a cake Briar swears is structurally sound even though it leans wildly. Kiln-fired mugs from the pottery shop in town sit ready at a hot cocoa station beside something much stronger. Lanterns swing; the cold nips and Holly steals my bouquet and returns with s’mores skewers like it’s an even trade. I don’t care. I have both hands free and Axel’s palm fills one like it was made to.
“Hungry?” he asks.
“Later,” I say, eyes on his mouth.
He laughs under his breath. “Greedy.”
“For you.”
“Good,” he says, leaning down, claiming my mouth again quick and hot, a contrast to the kiss at the arch. His hand tightens at my hip, fingers pressing possessive, protective, obscene in the best way. “You’re mine.”
“Say it in front of everybody.”
He turns his head, voice low but not quiet. “All of you,” he announces, and the conversations around us drop, amused and ready. “You see her?”
Calls of “we see her” chorus back.
“She’s my wife.”
The cheer that answers is ridiculous. To my left, Dax screams into the night like a rock star. Someone pounds on the closest table. Levi attempts a trumpet fanfare with his mouth and fails spectacularly. I’m laughing when Axel swings me around, then slides his mouth to my ear.
“Dance with me.”
“I hate you when you ask things you already know the answer to,” I say, going anyway.
There’s no DJ. Just a playlist and a mountain, and that’s plenty. He draws me into him under the strings of lights, my palms on his shoulders, his on my lower back, the distancebetween us gone like it never mattered. We sway to an old song that sounds like the inside of a cabin at three a.m.—low, crackling, sure. People join. Couples find each other. Holly spins between Ash and Lucy, throwing her arms out like flying. Snow begins to fall again, slow and theatrical, the flakes fat enough to catch and linger. They salt Axel’s hair. I tell him he looks illegal. He says I look like trouble.
“True.” I tilt my face up. “Want to commit some?”
“Say when,” he says, all appetite and control, and I feel a spark catch low and hot. His thumbs stroke circles that promise later. His mouth brushes my cheek. His breath is heat. Every inch of me is aware of every inch of him: disciplined strength, quiet power, the way he contains everything but never me.
The song changes. He spins me out and back, the kind of move you don’t plan but your body writes because it knows the language. I land against him with a softoof.He laughs quietly, then goes still, eyes tracking something over my shoulder. I turn.
The crew lines the edge of the clearing with sparklers in their hands, unlit, waiting. Levi winks; Dax grins; Captain Cole lifts a brow with awell?that makes my throat go tight again.
Axel kisses my temple, then steps away, and I feel it before I see it—the way the group quiets for the ritual they didn’t put on the program because it would’ve made me cry. He retrieves the small handbell from a velvet-lined box on the table near the arch. The firehouse bell, not the big one, the one they use for weddings and retirements.
