I was alone now, at the edge of the path, and within seconds I was gently setting my bouquet down and tearing at the ribbon.Of coursehe’d do something like this.
It was a note folded around a scrap of lace. I lifted the garter, soft blush pink, the fabric whisper-thin. I just laughed before focusing on Callum’s scrawl, dark and crooked across the page:
Something borrowed: your control.
Something blue: my balls if you don’t come back to me fast.
This? This is for later.
—Your Husband (almost)
At the very bottom, in smaller handwriting:
Turn it over.
My fingers trembled as I flipped the parchment. His handwriting was slightly messier here, like he’d scribbled it quickly, like maybe he was spiraling when he wrote it, wrecked and giddy and buzzing just like I was now.
Pain and poetry forever, right baby?
Mo chridhe.
Wear it so I can tear it off with my teeth tonight.
I nearly dropped it.
The garter was suddenly too hot in my palm. My thighs clenched. My breath shuddered. I craved him when my pussy clenched around nothing, couldhearthe rasp of his voice in every word, could feel his stubble on my thighs.
It was filthy. It was perfect. It was him. And it made me want to cry and come and sprint into forever.
I laughed, breathless, as I scrambled to slide the garter on my left thigh, then straighten my dress.
My hands were shaking, my heart was full, and my panties? Ruined. Again.
I started to fold the note back up when I saw a butterfly he’d drawn in the corner. The wings were uneven, sketched like he used to doodle in the margins of his notebooks during GPDA meetings. And right beneath it, he wrote,You give me butterflies.
And as if conjured from the ink, movement flickered in my periphery.
I stilled.
A blue butterfly—so vivid it looked unreal—fluttering just in front of me, wings shimmering in the light. It floated for a breathless moment, then landed gently on the olive sprig tucked in my bouquet, still resting on the ground at my feet. Its wings were the exact blue of Callum’s eyes. The color of sky and sea and the first moment I knew I loved him.
I stared. It didn’t feel random. It felt… intentional.
And suddenly, I remembered the loss, the ache we carried, the pain that nearly broke me.
But he didn’t run. He held me through it. Every cramp, every sob, every hour I didn’t think I could go on—he stayed. He never looked away, and he loved me harder.
Butterflies meant change. And rebirth. And the souls of those we loved. Sometimes they meant rainbow babies. Sometimes they meant hope.
And in that moment, watching the wings pulse slowly, I realized if we could survivethat, if we could still make each other laugh and ache andfeellike this after everything… we’d be okay.
My stomach fluttered. My fingers brushed the sketched wings. And to myself, I smiled.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “You give me butterflies too, baby.”
I slipped the note into the bouquet ribbon, tucking it behind my vows like a secret only the two of us would know. The butterfly lifted gently from the olive sprig and drifted up into the olive branches above, like it had delivered its message and was ready to go. I watched it disappear into the blue sky.
And then I stepped forward.
