Knox, two minutes later:Listen to my wife.
I pocket the phone and head for the apartment.
The door's unlocked. I push it open and Sarah's voice carries from the bedroom, mid-sentence, something about bobby pins and a veil that won't cooperate. She rounds the corner with a curling iron in one handand Reeve balanced on her hip, his fist tangled in her hair, she stops when she sees me.
"I literally texted you four minutes ago."
"I read it. Compelling argument."
She narrows her eyes.Reeve stares at me with Knox's gold-flecked irises and shoves his entire hand into his mouth. The expressionSarahlevels at me could wilt steel. But the corner of her mouth lifts.
"Two minutes." She points the curling iron at my chest. "If you wrinkle that dress, I'll let Knox deal with you."
She disappears down the hallwaywith Reeve gnawing on her shoulderand I hear the bedroom door click shut.
Jess stands by the window.
White dress, simple, no beading or lace or whatever else wedding magazines sell for the price of a motorcycle. The fabric skims her shoulders and falls straight, and wildflowers twist through her hair, purple clover and Queen Anne's lace tucked behind her ear.
Through the bond, everything she's feeling rolls into me at once. Nerves winding tight around her ribs. Happiness running hot beneath them. A fierceness that belongs to a woman whomakes decisions with her whole body and never second-guesses once she's committed.
She turns, and the air leaves my lungs.
"You're not supposed to see me yet."
"Couldn't wait," I say.
Her lips press together and the fight lasts about a second and a half before she crosses the room, fists my lapels, and kisses me hard. I catch her waist and pull her in and forget about the dress, the ceremony, the fifty people waiting in the courtyard, all of it gone except the taste of her lip gloss and the sound she makes when I lift her off the floor.
She pulls back laughing. "My lipstick."
"I'll fix it." I run my thumb across her lower lip, smoothing the smudge I left there, and her expression softens in a way that makes my chest hurt. "You look—" The word sticks. I swallow around it. "Jess."
"That good, huh?"
"Better."
She straightens my lapels where she crushed them. Her ring glints, the amber stone throwing a warm glow across my shirt. I close my fingers around hers and press a kiss to her knuckles because I can't help it. She's standing here in a wedding dress and she picked me.
"See you out there, Kitten."
"Don't trip."
"No promises."
The courtyard looks different in December.
The brothers hung lights again, the same way they did for Knox and Sarah's wedding, strings of warm bulbs crisscrossing between the posts. Mason jars with candles line the aisle. Wildflowers in mismatched vases crowd every flat surface, and the gardens have gone winter-brown except for the patch behind the fire pit.
I stop walking.
The brick circle where Knox burned our father's gifts three months ago sits half-hidden behind a tangle of new growth. Wild grasses, yarrow, a stubborn cluster of late-blooming asters pushing through the ash. Nobody planted them. The seeds blew in or survived the fire underground, and the earth filled in what rage tried to empty.
I don't say anything but I take my place at the end of the aisle and watch the candles flicker and keep the observation between me and the asters.
Knox stands beside me. My brother, my president. Tux and cut, same as me, his tusks pale against green skin, his expression locked down the way it gets when he's holding himself together through force of will. He got ordained online, spent twenty minutes filling out a form on his laptop while Sarah read the requirements over his shoulder and Jess made jokes about Knox's pastoral authority until he threatened to officiate in Orcish.
"You good?" he asks.
