(Life is real. We've made some big changes.)
I loved you from the first time I saw you, and I love you now. You're my fire, the fire that burns inside me and I want to take care of you for the rest of our lives. This is our second chance, Baby and we need to take it. Marry me. Make me the happiest man alive. You're the love of my life. My fire. Please.
He lets go of me, dropping to his knees, holding my hands in his. The quilt lands in the grass. My blood hardens in the cold and then instantly, painfully ecstatically liquefies once more. The fire roars through my skull, lighting the dark along the way, flooding out the monsters and the rage and the grief. The quiet that remains is striking and abrupt. I nod because I can't speak.
He opens the box, fumbling again. It's started to rain and the wind has picked up and the fire struggles but prevails. Fate.
Please tell me that's a yes, Peanut.
Yes, I whisper it because I don't trust my voice.
You saved my life. He slips the ring on my finger. It comes to rest on top of the band he gave me after we were symbolically married in a tiny private ceremony with Benjamin, years ago.
I hold up my hand. It's a heart-shaped diamond. Our second chance beats in ice and carbon. It's beautiful and it's time.
***
I don't like big weddings. Not sure if you noticed (snort). This one took place in Coney Island, on the beach in the shadow of the Circus sideshow. Then we went straight to the Wonder Wheel. It was the most perfect place I could envision on short notice to marry Lochlan (for real, FOR REAL this time) and it had to be right. We were there just long enough for our short ceremony and a bunch of rides and then it was done. Sam performed the ceremony. Ben stood beside me too. Schuyler, Daniel and PJ came to be witnesses and because we wanted them with us.
We had a picnic of hotdogs and wedding cake on the beach. Then we drove to Montauk and had a few nights of a honeymoon alone while everyone else flew home. We stood and stared at each other on the porch of our cottage rental wondering if we would be able to get along, finally, at long last now that we're together. Officially.
After a long time there Lochlan nodded. We'll be fine. I love you. That's all I care about right now.
Ben and I very deliberately, quietly divorced a long time ago (almost two years ago, actually) and I didn't say anything because I couldn't. The pressure is off him though he said he intends to continue everything as always but maybe not feel so much guilt if he winds up spending six days straight in his studio or falls off the wagon or wants to tour or something that causes distance.
The distance would still be felt if you're not here, I tell him and his eyes well up. He's still mine. He always will be mine. But he maintains he took the opportunity as a placeholder because he wanted this for us and I wasn't ready but it wasn't the grand experiment that he makes it sound like. He still loves me so. He just knew if he hadn't taken my heart when the time came someone else would have and our chances would have evaporated, maybe forever. It's intense, this love with Lochlan. We're intense together and intense apart and there's that trouble of getting along and I wish I could see the future the way I can see the past. I don't know. And there are other factors at play here. I worry. I still have a lot of fear of the unknown. Caleb's threats don't fade. I don't know what happens next but the deed is done.
Lochlan and I are finally legally, legitimately married to each other.
OH MY GOD.
(It's not sinking in. At all. Pinch me. Wait, no, maybe slap me. Something.)
Ben is going to be my boyfriend but only because that was one of the things I wouldn't budge on. Though he thought I should cut him completely loose I maintain that our hearts are (and our bed is) plenty big enough and somehow more weird if he isn't there. Lochlan is on board with this (Yes, surprise.) You would be too if you were him. He goes back to being Alpha everything and my precious little twelve-year-old heart is quieted. Happy at last.
Right where you should have been all along, Peanut.
But I can't see where he means because I'm blinded by the sun. It's in the shape of a heart. My heart. I got everything I ever wanted and didn't have to lose everything that was left in the process.
