Kimi, the human glacier, actually blinked hard and turned his face to the sea. “Too much,” he muttered. “It’s too much.”
And Lucy, bless hergoddamn heart, sang the next line with a crack in her voice so pure it felt like church.
For every scar / and every crash
That brought me here / to this path
As for Auri and me? We burst out laughing, hands squeezing as we picked up our pace.Of coursethey’d react like this. Of course our gremlins couldn’t let us get married without at least one emotional breakdown and a public declaration of love-fueled rage.
We reached the altar—bare stone, olive leaves at our feet, a wooden arch casting a soft shadow that looked like a halo right where we stood. Colette waited with her hands folded and asmile that said sheknew. Knew what it meant to love through pain. Knew what it meant to stay.
Auri passed her bouquet to Ivy and then turned to face me, veil fluttering as she grabbed both of my hands with hers. Her flushed cheekbones glowed with sunlight. My heart—fuck, mywhole chest—ached like a bruise.
My blushing bride.
Colette cleared her throat. “Bonsoir, mes amis.” Her voice was soft but trembling at the edges. like she already knew she wouldn’t make it through without crying. ”Today isn’t a performance. This wedding is not for show, and it’s not for anyone else but these two individuals standing before us. It’s a moment. One they have both earned.”
I could barely hear her over the sound of my pulse. My heart was trying to punch its way out of my chest. Auri’s fingers tightened in mine. I stared at her, lashes still wet, pouty lips glossy and begging for me to seal this covenant with a kiss. She looked like a fucking vision, and she looked at me like I was one too.
My thumb brushed over hers. Her pinky curled against my hand like a promise. We didn’t look away.
“I’ve seen vines come back after fire,” Colette continued. “I’ve seen entire fields reborn after drought, roots deepening in silence until the earth could sustain them again. And I’ve come to believe that the strongest things in this world don’t survivedespitethe pressure—they survivebecauseof it.”
I felt that one in my chest, deep and low. My eyes burned, but I didn’t bother blinking it away.
“They’ve already survived the things that try to hollow you out until you forget how to reach for softness. But they didn’t forget.”
Auri took a small step closer to me, and her familiar smell hit me. I closed my eyes and breathed it in, grounding myself in her.
“This isn’t the beginning,” Colette whispered. “It’s the honoring of a thousand choices already made in the dark. The quiet ones. The hard ones. The ones that mattered. The ones that didn’t.” She paused, inhaling sharply. “They’ve chosen each other over and over, without fanfare, without a script. And they are here now—rooted, ready, and sacred.”
I swallowed hard. Auri’s lips parted, eyes never leaving mine. It felt religious. Like time had fractured and given us this pause in the chaos, a moment no one else could enter. In a strange way, this felt more intimate than anything we’d done. More naked than skin.
“Aurélie. Callum.” Colette smiled through her tears. “You may now speak your vows.”
Aurélie let out a breath like it was the first one she’d taken in hours. Her hand trembled in mine.
I didn’t move.
She turned, slow and steady, and I felt the absence of her touch like a wound as she pulled her hand from mine. Her fingers brushed my knuckles once before she moved away. Ivy stepped forward without a word and offered the slip of paper with both hands. Auri nodded in silent thanks and took it, carefully unfolding it like it was something sacred.
And to me? It was.
Auri’s voice was barely louder than the breeze when she began. “I didn’t know what true love was supposed to feel like,” she said, eyes fixed on the paper, then slowly lifting to me. “Not until it looked like showing up. Like choosing. Like safety when everything else was spinning. It was chaotic and terrifying andreal.”
My throat tightened. My knees actually wobbled, just like she wanted.
“I thought I had to earn everything. Prove I was strong enough, fast enough,worthenough. And then you saw mefalling apart and said you’d stay anyway. You—” she stopped, choking on a sob and pressing her fingers to her lips for a moment before continuing. “You showed up for me when I couldn’t show up for myself, and you never made me feel weak or like I was less than. You wanted the version of me I didn’t know I was allowed to be.”
She dabbed at a tear that slid down her cheek. My hand twitched at my side, desperate to reach for her, but she was standing steady on her own. She didn’t need me to catch her right now.
I’d never loved her more.
“I spent so long being at war with myself. My body. My mind. My heart. I thought power meant hiding the cracks, never asking for help. But you…” Her voice wavered again, her French accent thickening and curling around each syllable, chest rising and falling with deep breaths. “You never looked away. You never tried to fix me. You just held me steady until I could see myself the way you did.”
And there were the butterflies erupting in my stomach.
“Putting you in front of a mirror usually does the trick,” I muttered, winking at her when a flush crept up her neck.
