Suddenly my dress felt cinched too tight. The breeze off the water seemed too weak.
The officiant turned to me and asked, “Chloe, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband? To honor and cherish him, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish always?”
The first time I tried to push the words out, they got stuck beneath the weight of emotion in my throat. Finally, I managed, “I do.”
He turned and asked Bennett the same thing, and without hesitation, Bennett’s deep voice easily carried the two life-altering syllables: “I do.”
We each turned, he to Henry, and I to Sara, to retrieve our wedding rings. And as the judge spoke to us about the meaning of the rings, and I slid Bennett’s onto his finger, the only thing I could feel was the brilliance of Bennett’s smile as he stared down at it.
Damn, that ring looked good on his finger. This man was officially mine. If I couldn’t get my face tattooed on his arm, this ring would be a nice consolation prize. I moved my fingertip over his, feeling the smooth metal on his skin, but he pulled back a little, resisting my touch as his eyes went wide, just as my finger made contact with an enormous scratch in the platinum.
I pulled his hand up to look closer. What the fuck? Was there an actual dent in his wedding ring?
When I looked up at his face again, he shook his head slightly. “It’s okay,” he whispered.
“What the hell is this?” I asked under my breath.
“I’ll explain later,” he hissed.
I felt the fire in my gaze and he barely contained his laugh as the judge called out, “If there is anyone present who has reason to oppose the marriage of this man to this woman, please speak now or forever hold your peace.”
The guests grew completely quiet, and I stood, staring up at Bennett for a beat until the loud, deafening blast of a ship’s horn ripped through the silence. I clapped my hands over my ears, and the entire wedding party jumped and ducked in surprise. Several people screamed. The sound seemed to linger, reverberating across the sand and up over the lawn before being swallowed by the hulking mass of the hotel.
“Well,” Bennett said, smiling, “I guess we couldn’t move forward without the universe at least giving us a fair warning.”
At that, everyone erupted into laughter and applause, and with an enormous smile, the judge proclaimed, “Very well then. By the power vested in me by the state of California, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Chloe, you may kiss your groom.”
I did a little dance at this small victory. Bennett gave a little growl of defeat but then leaned into me as I stepped on my toes, shoeless and inches shorter than my husband—my husband!—and pulled him down to me.
I didn’t care that there were people watching.
I didn’t care that the expectation was that we would give a small kiss now and enjoy many more, deeper kisses later.
Right now, as of this moment, this man was my fucking husband, and I needed to make sure everything felt the same.
I relished the way his arms tightened around me so intensely I lost my breath. I relished the firm press of his mouth on mine, and the parting of his lips, the gentle slide of his tongue across mine . . . once, twice, three times, and the last time just a little deeper until I could feel the vibration of his sounds and practically taste his urgency. His breaths came out shallow and uneven on my tongue and his quiet words—ah, fuck, Chlo, and need to get you alone—finally made me pull away before I started stripping off his tux right here at the altar.
Breathless and grinning like idiots, we turned and faced a lawn-full of guests with hands suspended in the air, prepared to clap but wearing expressions of shock frozen on their faces.