I pressed a kiss to his chest. "I like the sound of that."
"The ring?"
"Being married to you."
He pulled me closer. Kissed the top of my head.
"Soon. I don't want to wait."
"Neither do I."
Six months later, we got married at the firehouse.
Where else?
This was the place we'd fought to save. The place that had brought us back together, that had given Garrett a family when he'd lost his, and given me back something I thought I'd never get.
The apparatus bay was transformed. White lights strung from the ceiling, woven through the ladders and hoses like stars caught in a net. Flowers everywhere, white roses, pale blue hydrangeas, greenery spilling from buckets that had held tools the day before.
It wasn't traditional. It wasn't fancy.
It was exactly right.
I stood at the entrance, bouquet trembling in my hands, and tried to remember how to breathe.
My mother found me first. She came around the corner in the navy dress she'd bought three months ago, the one she'd called me about six times to second-guess, and the moment she saw me, her face crumpled.
"Oh, sweetheart."
"Mom. Don't. If you start, I'll start, and I just got my mascara right."
She laughed through her tears and cupped my face in her hands. Studied me the way she used to when I was small, like she was checking for something only mothers could see.
"He waited for you." She said it quietly. "All those years. I used to pray for that boy, did you know that? Even when you wouldn't talk about him. Even when your father wanted to fly to New York and drag him back to you by his collar."
She smoothed a strand of hair from my face.
"I prayed he'd still be there when you were ready."
My throat closed. She didn't know the half of it. The letters I'd stopped answering. The calls I'd let go to voicemail. The years of silence that must have destroyed him.
When I'd finally told them, the depression, the miscarriage, the real reason I'd left, my mother had gone quiet for a long time. Then she'd said: You should have let us carry some of that, Sloane. That's what family is for.
I'd spent eight years learning she was right.
"I know, Mom." I kissed her cheek. "I know."
She squeezed my hands once more and went to take her seat. I watched her slide into the front row beside my father, who was already blinking too fast. My brother sat one row back, his wife beside him, their two kids fidgeting in clothes they clearly hated. My sister caught my eye from across the aisle and pressed her hand to her heart.
My family. The ones who'd held the door open every single time I needed to come home.
My brother had been the hardest sell. When I'd called to tell him Garrett and I were back together, the silence on the line had stretched long enough that I'd checked to make sure the call hadn't dropped.
You left that man in pieces, Sloane, he'd said finally. Two months after you came home, he showed up at the house. Did you know that? Drove down from New York, stood on the porch, and asked to see you. You were upstairs in bed. Hadn't eaten in two days. And Dad had to stand in the doorway and tell him you weren't ready. Tell him to go home. A pause. I watched that man walk back to his car, and I have never seen someone look like that. Like the ground had opened up underneath him. Another pause, longer. He deserves better than halfway. If you're doing this, do it all the way.
I hadn't known.
Garrett had driven five hours to DC. Stood on my parents' porch. Been turned away. And in all the months since we'd found our way back to each other, he'd never once mentioned it.
