“I vow to keep finding you in the weirdest places—behind the garage, in the sound of wind through trees, in the way my body feels when your hand is on my hip. I vow to say yes, even when I’m scared. I vow to follow you into the wild if you’ll keep walking beside me, even when I get us lost.”
Beau took a breath like it punched him.
June gave him the softest nod.
And then it was his turn.
He didn’t have anything written down. Of course he didn’t. He just looked at me with that slow, aching love in his eyes and started speaking like it was the only thing that mattered.
“Noelle,” he said, voice low and gravel-warm, “I used to think I was meant to live quiet. Fix cars. Keep my head down.Take care of the people who needed me and let the rest of the world pass by. I thought that was enough.”
He reached up and tucked a curl behind my ear.
“Then you showed up like a goddamn lightning storm, and suddenly nothing about my life felt small anymore. You made it feel like living meantsomething. Like there was still wonder in the world. And I wanted to be worthy of it.”
His throat worked around the next words.
“I don’t know what brought you here. Fate, magic, dumb luck. But I know what kept you here. We chose each other. And I’m gonna keep choosing you. Every day. I vow to be your anchor when you need it and your biggest believer when you don’t. I vow to hold your hand when it shakes, and your body when it doesn’t. And I vow to love you like it’s the only thing I was ever made for.”
The crowd sniffled. Delilah flat-out sobbed.
Even Shane was discreetly dabbing at his eyes with his pocket square.
June, wiping under one eye, cleared her throat. “Well, hell. That was beautiful. Okay then—by the power vested in me by God, community, and the state of Georgia—which, frankly, has no idea what to do with this—I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
She stepped back, her voice softening.
“You may kiss your bride.”
Beau didn’t wait. He caught my face in both hands and kissed me like he’d never stop. Like the night, the town, the trees, the band swelling behind us—all of it was just window dressing for the only thing that mattered.
Us.
And when we finally came up for air, the whole park burst into applause. The bluegrass band hit their first wild note. Lights flaredoverhead.
And I looked to the edge of the woods, half-expecting to see a shadow I’d been running from for years.
There was nothing.
Just the trees.
Still and quiet.
Like they were letting me go.
Like maybe, for the first time, I was finally safe.
Epilogue
BEAU
The monsterin the stroller was, if nothing else, exceptionally strange.
Blue-green eyes, dark hair…a bad attitude and this sense that it always knew more than I did and wasn’t going to let go of its secrets easily.
“Why the hell does she look like she’s schemin’ all the time?” I asked, looking up to find Noelle. She was sitting on a park bench beside me, watching people mill around for the Annual Gloaming Festival—glad to not be a part of the action. She turned and looked at our baby girl, then up to me.
“Because she is.”
