Brushing that aside, I wink at Celeste, who can always read asimple gesture, so she ushers everyone to another area of the plane. I unbuckle Rena, hauling her out of her chair and onto my lap, needing to hold her.
“Watch it, sailor. You need to take it easy, old man,” she teases.
As I whisk her hair behind her shoulder, my eyes meander all over her gorgeous face. “I’ll never be too old, too injured, or too worn out to have you wrapped around me.”
“Good.” She sprinkles kisses along my neck and jaw until she ends with a nibble on my ear. “Because I’ve got no problem busting you out of a nursing home or sneaking in at night so I can sleep with that monster cock inside me.”
I chuckle, gliding my hand over her cheek to angle her face to me, my thumb dusting over her silky skin. “Thank you.”
“You never have to thank me for that,” she says, and I can see in her blueberry-field gems that she knows that’s not what I’m referring to. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”
“You’re allowed to break with me,” I assure her even though she appears to be a pillar of strength. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah.” She smiles, entwining one of my curls around her index finger. “If I fall apart, you’ll be the first to know. But I don’t need to. Do you think it’s weird that I don’t feel bad?”
“Not at all. It’s your experience. Whatever you feel is yours alone to decide.”
She glances around, drawing my focus to the victory of warmth surrounding us—the family who shows up for us again and again—before she plants her grateful gaze on me. “I’ve said this before, but you weren’t the only one who needed to heal. And certainly not the only one who found it here. You’ve given me as much as I’ve given you.”
“I know, baby girl.” My chest tightens. I’m relieved that’s the case—that she’s healed with me—but also loathe that she’s had any pain at all. “It’s been a long road for both of us.”
“It has,” she agrees. “When you found me in Vegas, it was more than my location that you had tracked down. You helped me find adeeper, more independent side of myself. You opened the door to your home, your past, your pain, your family. And you, along with that family I get to be a part of, even compelled my brothers toseeme—not as the shiny, impulsive Noire princess, but as a worthy partner in our endeavors.” Her eyes well with a heartfelt gratitude. “So, I’m not broken, Ty. I’m free.”
So much wisdom conveyed through simple words.
My attention catches on the open window across the plane—the dark moonlit sky, cushioned by clouds and speckled with stars—before returning to the gift in my arms.
“Do you have any idea how spectacular you are?” I choke back the emotion threatening to burst from me with a hard swallow. “You were always my compass. Always my true north. I just didn’t want to see it. I hate that I waited to claim you and wish that our beginning was smoother. But now that you’re mine, I’m going to love the hell out of you. Spoil you rotten. Deliver your dreams. Make up for every moment of hesitation, every scar that blemished our story.”
She throws her head back in an animated cackle. “That is so sweet. And yet so flawed.”
I’ll never tire of that—the way she brightens every breath, shatters chains, leaps into life.
I chuckle, tightening my grip on her waist and nudging her closer. “Well, please, enlighten me,mybrilliant wife.”
“First of all, ‘Love The Hell Out Of You’ is a fitting song and exactly what I’m going to do to you too.” She hooks her arms around my neck and nuzzles her nose against mine, her pink-and-blonde strands cascading over my shoulders to shroud us in a curtain of her satin locks.
“You have nothing to make up for,” she goes on, “because we came together at the perfect time. And in the perfect way. I always felt like I was yours, but it’s the one thing I didn’t jump at. I held back, as if some inner voice inside me was shouting that the right time would come. And it did.” Straightening again, she inhales and exhales slowly, as though she’s willing me to absorb this, to soak inevery syllable. “Not when things were easy or the planets aligned. When our wounds scabbed over, so rough and bristly that they couldn’t be ignored or covered up or glossed over. Because that was always going to be our map to finding each other.”
There’s a part of me that wants to reject the direction she’s steering us because I can’t in any capacity accept that what Ella, Audrey, and my mother endured was something that I gained from. It’s hard enough to permit myself to be happy. But the woman in my arms has hammered these sentiments into me so much that I’m finally ready to embrace whatever this life has for me. To view it as honoring their lives through mine rather than commemorating their deaths through my self-inflicted torture.
So, I nod, uttering, “Our scars,” to acknowledge that I’m following her train of thought.
“Yeah, Ty. You said it from the beginning. A garden upon graves. The flourish after the burn. Blooms in the desert. And, Jesus, it’s even in your tattoo—the tree growing out of skulls. A beautiful life that blossomed from sacrifice and pain and death. That’s our story. Our moms, your dad, your sisters—they were the soil, the seeds.” She waves her hand around the plane as evidence. “Everything we have is a gift from them. Us and this family—we’re the branches, the fruit.”
“Right,” I agree, struck not only with her profound perspective, but also with precisely what is flitting through my wife’s beautiful mind. “Some people would say that means our love was predestined—written in the stars—but those aren’t the lyrics you’d choose for our love song.”
Her whole face is alight with awe as her fingers rise to her lips. “God, you really freaking get me.” She shakes her head, her radiant hazels teeming with so much emotion when they finally latch on to mine. “That’s right. We fought for each other so much harder than that. We fell in love by Tracing Scars.”
TWO WEEKS LATER
RENA
No rain today, but Ty delivered the blueberry fields right to our backyard.
Yesterday, we were married—for the second time—at La Lune Noire.
Axel had shut down half of the resort so that all the employees I consider family could watch him walk me down the aisle.
