Because we did it.
We were married.
Not in a ballroom or cathedral. No roses, no string quartet.
But it felt real. Heavy. Fierce.
More binding than any vow could ever be.
The license in my hand didn’t feel like proof—I already had that. It was in the bruises on Nick’s knuckles. The ring on my finger. The fire still burning behind my ribs.
This wasn’t a fairytale. This was war. This was us.
We stepped away from the clerk’s desk, Rhys giving a final nod as we made our way toward the doors. The tension coiled around me again, like armor re-latching as the outside world came closer. I could hear it before I saw it—camera shutters, voices calling my name, headlines being written in real time.
They would never understand.
They’d call it impulsive. Desperate. Toxic.
But none of them had walked through what we had. None of them knew what it meant to be owned and to choose that—to look someone in the eye and say yes not because you had to, but because you wanted the fire.
The storm.
Him.
Nick’s hand found mine again just before we reached the door. His grip wasn’t gentle, and I didn’t want it to be. It said mine louder than any press release ever could.
This was our beginning. Unpolished. Unapologetic.
And if the world burned for it?
Good. Let it.
The hallway was too quiet.
Like the world was holding its breath.
Each step we took echoed behind us, a whisper of everything we’d just set on fire. I could still feel the courthouse air clinging to my skin—too sterile, too bright. Like it hadn’t been built for people like us.
“So…” I said, the word catching in my throat. “Now I’m your wife.”
It didn’t sound real. It sounded like a joke someone else might make at my expense—just another headline waiting to be twisted.
But Nick turned toward me, and his eyes locked onto mine like he’d already seen this coming long before I had.
“You always were,” he said, quiet. Certain.
And maybe it shouldn’t have meant so much. But it did.
His words landed in my chest like an anchor and a promise all at once. I smiled then—sharp, crooked, unsure. Like trying on a new name that didn’t quite fit yet. Wife. Like maybe I was still learning how to carry that title without cutting myself on it.
We stopped just before the exit, the heavy courthouse doors looming ahead. One more threshold. One more leap.
I leaned against the cold wall, trying to slow my pulse, to calm the swirl of what now, what next, what ifs screaming through my mind.
“Do you think they’ll come after us?” I asked, before I could stop myself. The question tasted like fear.
Nick didn’t flinch. Didn’t hesitate.
