My heart pounded so hard with excitement that I thought it might bruise my ribs. I leaned my back against it, grounding myself in the chill of limestone. My palm followed, splayed against the surface just around the corner. It was smooth beneath my fingertips, textured in places.
I could feel the history in it. Could feel the stillness of something that waited, steady and unwavering. The place wherewe both reached, but didn’t look. Where love could exist in anticipation.
Around the corner, I felt him arrive the way you feel the weather change. Pressure shifted, the air turned sweeter, the sound of his footsteps changed the cadence of the earth itself. I didn’t turn the corner. Neither did he.
But then his hand slipped over mine, and my eyes fell closed in relief. Our fingers laced, palm to palm, warmth to warmth, like two arteries finding the same heart.
So here we were, right before everything changed, standing together unseen and untouched by the rest of the world.
We stayed like that, backs to different walls, fingers laced. The building held our breath and the faint noise of our friends and the hush of late afternoon, punctuated only by the soft click of Eleni’s camera as she captured a moment that felt eternal.
Today, we chose to marry in whispers instead of headlines. And I’d never been happier.
“Color?” he murmured, voice low, Scottish sanded down to silk.
“Green,” I said. It came out as a hoarse whisper.
“Good,” he breathed.
“Et toi, mon amour?”And you?
“Vert,” he answered in French.
A wave of emotions crashed into me. I looked at the water in the distance, and it looked like everything I’d ever been afraid to want—vast, inevitable, too beautiful to believe in. And yet here he was. Mine. Certain. Constant. A man who chose me over and over again, even when I couldn’t understand why.
“I used to think I was hard to love. Butyoumade me impossible to forget.”
My laugh cracked into a small, helpless sound, and merde, I think I fell even more in love with him. “You’re going to ruin my makeup.”
“I’ll kiss it back on.”
We didn’t rush. We never did when it mattered. His thumb moved slowly over the inside of my wrist, tracing the faint vein there, the way he always did when he wanted to soothe me without words. Like he knew my pulse better than I did.
I pressed my spine to the wall until the stone learned the shape of me. On the other side, I imagined his shoulder blades, wide and certain, doing the same. I didn’t know what he was wearing. What any of the boys were wearing. We’d left all that a mystery on purpose. We needed some element of surprise in this elopement.
I tried to picture it anyway. I imagined black linen, a sharp collar, the cuff of his sleeve rolled to his elbows. He would look so unfairly good, veiny forearms on full display and blue eyes glowing brighter than the sea behind him. And I was the one who’d get to unravel him later.
The first time as his wife.
My chest burned with the thought of leaving this island with him as my husband. Of going back to the French countryside where we’d just planted our roots, two hellfire souls learning how to soften without losing their edge. We’d return as covenant. Stronger. Married.Home.
“I can’t see you,” he said softly, “but I can feel you smiling.”
“I am,” I admitted. “I’m thinking about our kitchen in France and how you always burn the first pancake because you refuse to wait for the pan to heat.”
“Strategic sacrifice,” he said, mock offended and gloriously Scottish. “Besides, you love the second one.”
“I love you.”
Silence stretched, sacred and soft. Even the sea seemed to hold its breath. It was the comfortable kind of silence only meant for soulmates.
“Say it again,” he murmured, voice lower now, rougher, like gravel warmed in the sun. Like a promise that would get broken down and rewritten in the dark later tonight.
“Je t’aime, mon cœur,” I whispered, smiling so hard my cheeks ached. I wanted him so badly I could barely keep still, wanted to kiss him breathless and pin him to the nearest wall and thank him with every inch of my body. “I love you, Cal. I’m ready. I’m not scared.”
“Me neither,” he admitted. “Auri, I’m so fucking happy I don’t know what to do with myself.” His thumb kept tracing the vein at my wrist. “I love you with every piece of me. Now, later, always.”
Auri.
