“Like everything I never knew I wanted.” He squeezes my hands. “How’d I get so lucky?”
“You bid a thousand dollars on a stranger.”
“Best investment I ever made.”
I laugh, blinking back my tears, and turn to face Henry Sutton—the ranch owner who agreed to officiate because apparently, he got ordained online specifically for occasions like this.
“Friends,” Henry begins, his deep voice carrying across the clearing. “We’re gathered here because two stubborn people finally figured out what the rest of us knew from the start.”
A ripple of laughter moves through the crowd. Jane whoops. Tex shushes her.
“Sawyer and Jessie came together by accident,” Henry continues. “A paperwork error, a clerical mistake, a bureaucratic mix-up that should’ve been nothing more than an inconvenience.”
Sawyer’s thumb strokes across my knuckles, steady and sure.
“But anyone who’s watched them these past months knows it was never an accident. It was fate getting its paperwork right for once.”
My breath catches. That's what Sawyer said, that first morning, when the clerk called with the news.The universe getting its paperwork right.
“Today, they’re choosing each other on purpose. Not because a form got filed wrong, but because they can’t imagine filing anything separately ever again.”
I glance at Sawyer. He's watching me with that look, the one that makes me feel seen, known, and cherished down to my bones.
“Sawyer.” Henry turns to him. “Do you take Jessie as your wife? To love, protect, and build with—studios, families, and whatever chaos she brings to your perfectly organized life?”
The crowd chuckles. Sawyer doesn’t look away from me.
“I do.” His voice is firm and unshakable. “I already did. I’m just making it official.”
“Jessie.” Henry turns to me. “Do you take Sawyer as your husband? To love, challenge, and stay with, even when he arranges the mugs by size and alphabetizes the spice rack?”
I laugh through my tears. “I do. I'm done running. He’s my home.”
Sawyer makes a sound between a laugh and a sob, and I realize he’s not even trying to hide the tears now.
“Then by the power vested in me by the internet and the state of Montana, I pronounce you husband and wife,” Henry announces. “Again. On purpose this time.” He grins. “Sawyer, kiss your bride.”
Sawyer doesn’t need to be told twice.
He pulls me in and kisses me deeply, thoroughly, and completely inappropriately for a public ceremony. The clearing erupts. Tex is whistling. Jane is sobbing. One of the veterans is banging pots together.
When we finally break apart, both breathless, Sawyer presses his forehead to mine.
“Wife,” he says, like he’s testing the word. Like he can’t believe he gets to say it.
“Husband,” I answer. “For real this time.”
“For always.”
He kisses me again, softer now, and the world narrows to just us—the mountain, the clearing, and the promise of a future we built on purpose.
The reception is chaos in the best way.
Someone produces a fiddle. Someone else produces moonshine that burns all the way down. Tex makes a toast that’s sixtypercent jokes and forty percent genuine emotion, and by the end, everyone’s crying, including Tex.
I dance with Sawyer under the stars, then with Tex, then with Saint, then with half the veterans from the ranch. They’ve all welcomed me—not as an outsider who stumbled in, but as one of their own.
“She’s ours now,”Tex said the first time Sawyer brought me to a ranch dinner. “Tank claimed her, so she’s ours.”
