RYLEE
“Rylee,” Reverend Holden said, smiling and nodding toward her. “Your go.”
Rylee snickered, moving her attention off the reverend and over to her soon-to-be husband, Xander, who stood before her dressed in the finest cream tuxedo. The top button of his dress shirt was undone. He was the finest husband she ever did see.
A husband.
The idea sent a charge through her that settled in her heart and made her force in a breath to keep the tears in.
Her friends Nadia and Parker had helped with her makeup, insisting they had to do something since Rylee refused to have bridesmaids. According to her, she was not going to piss either one of them off by not making them maid of honor.
In her bedroom, they took turns making their friend up, both Nadia and Parker dabbing at their eyes and smiling from the application of primer to the spritz of finishing spray.
“You’ve given me hope, friend,” Parker said. “I may need to stop mean-mugging these fools who approach me and give them a shot. See something for a little.”
“For real,” Nadia added, taking a seat on Rylee’s bed and staring at her in awe. “Maybe I might keep my profile up on HeartMates?—”
“Delete it,” both Rylee and Parker instructed, turning to each other and laughing.
“Aht!” Nadia said over their humor. “Not y’all dogging the company I still work for! You know what, fuck y’all.”
Rylee fell back in her chair, laughing even harder.
It was the laughter Rylee needed before one of the biggest steps of her life.
She’d been taking a lot of big steps in her life. Moving out of the brownstone and now getting married. And each phase had felt like smooth sailing, because the decision was intentional, and now… she was open to it all, with wide open arms.
“Xander,” Rylee started, tilting her head back to meet his eyes. “When I tell you Ineverthought I’d get here… that’s an understatement. But I’ve come to learn whenever you’re involved, you make the impossible possible.”
Xander licked his lips, the corners pulled up into a smile.
“You met me at a time when I was still so sad,” she voiced, her bottom lip quivering. “I’d experienced a loss that broke me in a way I never knew was possible.”
Rylee glanced over at the chair that was open beside a smiling Ivy and Cyrus Walker, her eyes settling on the card with Lennox’s name scripted, her heart swelling at the sight of it.
She knew if he were there, sitting in that chair, his smile would be so big.
You finally got it right, Ry,she could hear Lennox saying in her ear. And that brought a smile to her face.
“Through you, I’ve learned that grief doesn’t vanish. It just… softens. And it only softens when you’ve found a soft place to land.”
Rylee squeezed Xander’s hand and sniffed back her tears.
“Xander, you are my soft place. From the day we met outside your mother’s daycare, you havealwaysbeen my soft place. And I can only pray I can be that for you too.”
When she suggested they just get married in their backyard, she shocked herself. Rylee had always wanted marriage, and the end of her engagement years ago could have ruined that hope for her… which she believed it did.
But she learned that the right person will make you change your mind about decisions you thought were set in stone.
She also learned that the right person could make her want to stop trying to carry Lennox in her arms… and start learning how to carry him in her heart.
“Before you, I didn’t know if I’d get here… standing in front of someone again with this much love in my heart, and this much excitement for the future.Ourfuture.”
She watched Xander’s eyes water, him twisting his lips from left to right to keep the tears in.
“I love yousomuch that saying it to you every time charges me in a way that just agrees with every part of me.”
Xander moved his eyes off her and turned a little to swipe a hand down his face.
