Chapter 20 #2
He flushes—always, always—and nods. “I do. Not sure how I’ll explain it on the credit card, but fuck it.”
“Fuck, that’s hot, you saying that,” I say solemnly, and he actually laughs, full and surprised.
“Rafe?”
“Yeah.”
His smile softens, something shifting behind it. “You have no idea what it meant, seeing you there. At the game yesterday.”
The words hit harder than they did the first time, like he reached in and gripped something already bruised. I can’t tell if he knows what he’s doing to me, if he realizes that every time he looks at me this way, I forget how to breathe.
“I wanted to be there,” I say, voice low. “I needed to see you win.” Because I love you.
He exhales, a little unsteady. “You did.”
“Good,” I say, smiling faintly. “Then we both got what we came for.”
He breathes out. “Okay.”
“Okay,” I echo, and we sit like that, not kissing, not talking, just letting the limo’s motion and the city’s smear hold us.
The convoy hooks hard to the right and pulls up to a building that could be anything from the outside—stucco, vague sign, a single carousel of light above the door—but inside is pure Vegas invention.
A woman in white sunglasses behind a glass counter waves two clipboards.
“If you’re the rush ceremonies, you’re lucky,” she trills. “We just had a cancellation.”
Two things happen at once: the soon-to-be bride squeals so high dogs three neighborhoods over perk up, and Miles leans to my shoulder and murmurs, “License.”
He’s right. Vegas might marry you in a drive-thru by an Elvis who smells like Bengay, but she’ll still check you for the right paperwork.
I look at Ollie. He looks at me. It’s ridiculous how fast the air changes. How a single word can open a door neither of us knew was there a second ago.
She said ceremonies. Plural.
The noise around us fades—Eli laughing too loud, Drew humming the “Wedding March,” Miles talking to the woman in the veil—and it’s just us, in the middle of it, hearts beating to the same reckless rhythm.
“Clark County Marriage License Bureau’s open till midnight,” Miles says, casual as anything, like he’s reading the thought straight out of my head. “Seven minutes from here if the lights are green.”
Eli’s eyes go so wide his crown slips sideways. “We’re doing this?”
Drew claps once, delighted and horrified. “We’re absolutely doing this.”
I don’t take my eyes off Ollie. His mouth is a stunned line, but his eyes—God, his eyes—are lit like the floor under a stage, like he’s about to jump without checking how far down it goes.
“Rafe—” he starts, voice catching somewhere between disbelief and laughter.
I step in, close enough to feel his warmth. “I know,” I say quietly. “It’s insane. It’s—fuck, it’s everything.”
He stares at me like he’s trying to decide whether I’m serious or just drunk enough to believe in miracles. Maybe it’s both. Maybe that’s the point.
“Tell me not to ask you,” I say, softer. “Tell me this isn’t exactly what it feels like it is.”
Ollie’s breath comes out uneven. The smallest shake of his head. “I can’t tell you that.”
Something in my chest tilts, weightless and sure. “Then come on,” I murmur. “Let’s go see if forever’s open late.”
He hesitates, and I can read everything passing through his expression: his fear, hope, disbelief. But I know I can see his love there, too, right here for me to claim as my own.
“We don’t have to,” I say, because he needs the out, and because a part of me is good. “We can just watch strangers make the most Vegas choice of their lives and eat cake that tastes like chalk.”
“Or,” Eli stage-whispers, “you could make the most Vegas choice of your life, and we can eat chalk-cake at your wedding.”
I should be embarrassed that my friends can see right through me. I’m not. I take Ollie’s hand. The room drops away. “Marry me.”
He does a literal double take. Then he laughs, shocked and wrecked and too happy, and hauls me in by the shirt and kisses me like we already said I do. “You’re out of your mind,” he says against my mouth.
“Deeply,” I say. “Three alarms on your phone. A 10:20 a.m. flight. No one needs to know until we decide they do. But we both know this isn’t the part we’ll regret.”
He goes still, like a coin on its last spin. Then he nods once. “Okay.”
The word tears a sound out of my throat that I’ve never even made on a stage.
“Okay,” I repeat, just to taste it.
The bride is being shepherded into a side room when Miles drags us back outside, taps the driver’s window, and says, “Bureau. Now.”
The driver grins, like he’s heard weirder things tonight, and we scramble back inside and are moving again, night folding around us like we’re a secret everyone knows.
The bureau is fluorescent and beige. People in club clothes and tuxes that cost less than my boots fill out forms with hands that shake from too much adrenaline. A woman at the counter dispenses pens and smiles like she’s babysitting chaos and is fond of it anyway.
We show IDs. We say our ages. We spell our names.
We pay a fee that feels like buying a firework.
My hand shakes once when I sign and then steadies.
Ollie writes so neatly I want to kiss his knuckles for it.
The clerk stamps something and hands over the paper like a priest giving communion.
“Congratulations,” she says, and for the first time, the word doesn’t feel like something that belongs to other people.
Back to the chapel. Our group is split now—half disappeared into Room B with a woman in a rhinestone stole, the rest loitering in a lobby that smells like gardenia and copier toner. There are three chapel doors, three bells, three Elvis portraits in three different levels of heartbreak.
Drew grabs my shoulders and shakes me, grinning like he’s going to cry. “You sure?”
“Yes,” I say, and it’s the easiest truth I’ve ever said out loud.
Eli presses a miniature bottle into my hand. “Liquid courage,” he says, then snatches it back. “No, never mind, you don’t need it.”
Miles squeezes the back of my neck once, gentle, like a brother. “Remember to breathe.”
We flash the license. The coordinator—deep tan, headset, efficiency that could cut diamonds—points us to Room C. “An officiant will be right in. Witnesses?”
“We’ve got three,” I say, and our idiots lift their hands like they’re volunteering for skydiving.
The room is all fairy lights and fake flowers and a white runner that looks like it’s seen everything and learned not to judge.
There’s a little arch and two microphones on stands, which I pointedly ignore, because if I see a mic right now, I’ll turn this into a concert and we’ll never get out of here.
Ollie and I stand at the front, close enough that our shoulders touch. He looks from the arch to me, to the paper in my hand, to me again. “We’re actually doing this.”
“Apparently.”
“You’re not going to wake up tomorrow and decide this was a mistake?”
“Only if you do,” I say, and he shakes his head so fast the motion blurs.
A woman in a suit slides in with a leather binder and a smile that could calm a hurricane. “Ready?”
I look at him. He looks at me. We both nod.
The officiant begins with words I’ve heard in movies and never believed belonged to me.
I don’t remember all of them. I remember the way Ollie’s thumb finds the inside of my wrist and stays there.
I remember Eli crying with no shame and Drew laughing every time he sniffles and Miles just standing very still with his jaw tight like he’ll break if he moves.
“Vows?” she asks.
We didn’t write any. There wasn’t time. There doesn’t need to be.
“I’ll go first,” I say, and feel my voice steady itself because it knows how to carry a room and how to carry a heart.
“Oliver Marshall,” I start, and watch him flinch at his full name like I meant to tease him, which I did, but also because I want to say it right once before I spend the rest of my life saying it soft.
“I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe in timing, and the second you looked at me with that ridiculously perfect blush, something in my chest decided to make room.
” I swallow. Miles sniffs. “I promise to make noise with you and for you. I promise to be the person you can be messy with. I promise to be proud and loud and quiet when you need quiet. And I promise that if any scout, manager, governor, or god tries to tell you who you are, I’ll be the one who stands in the door and says fuck no.
” I swallow hard and finally say, “I love you so fucking much.”
His laugh breaks, and then he’s blinking fast. “I’m not good at this,” he says, and his voice stills the room like a held breath.
“I don’t… talk about myself. I play. I show up.
I make the right face and shake the right hands and say the sentences people need me to say.
” He looks at me. “You never asked me for the right face. You just asked me to be here. And I am.” His hand tightens on my wrist. “I promise to try. To try to be brave enough to be known. To try to give you songs. To try to let you keep your fire without being scared of getting burned.” His mouth tilts.
“And I promise to set three alarms when it matters, and the whole time keep on loving you. Because I do, Rafe, so fucking much.”
Our witnesses laugh. The officiant smiles like she’s heard thousands of vows and still likes when they’re true.
“Rings?” she asks.
We don’t have rings. Drew curses softly, then rips the string bracelet from his wrist and thrusts it at me. “Use this,” he says.
Eli pulls the glow-stick crown off his head and snaps it in half. “Symbolic,” he says solemnly.
Miles, bless him, produces two black guitar-string loops from his wallet like a magician. “Emergency spares,” he says when we stare. “What, I can’t plan for chaos?”
They’re perfect—thin, dark, mine. I slide one onto Ollie’s finger; he slides one onto mine. They’re too big. They’re exactly right.
“By the authority vested in me by the state of Nevada,” the officiant says, and gives us the smile cue, “I now pronounce you married.”
The room doesn’t cheer; it erupts. Eli howls. Drew shouts a string of vowels that might be a language. Miles says, “Holy shit,” in a voice like a prayer. The bride from Room B rips in with her veil crooked to holler “Hooray” at us and vanishes again in a cloud of sequins.
And him—my husband—fuck… he grabs my face and kisses me like we invented the word yes.
The world tilts, the lights blur, and for one long, perfect second, the city outside stops gambling long enough to hear two idiots promise things they have no business promising and mean every word.
We sign the certificate with shaking hands.
The officiant stamps something official.
Our friends pass around a plastic flute of something sparkling that tastes like apples and victory.
Miles is filming on a phone, a video that will never see the light of social media.
The coordinator presses an envelope into my palm with the license tucked safely inside.
“Congratulations,” she says again, and this time I believe I deserve it.
There are details we haven’t figured out. There are a hundred conversations waiting for us in the morning. There is a 10:20 a.m. flight and a next game and a meeting at eleven with a man who could crack a door I’ve been pounding on since I was a teenager.
But right now, there’s a hand in mine and a ring around my finger and a kiss that tastes like the rest of my life.
We walk out into the Vegas night married, laughing, reckless, and so sure that even the Strip lights look shy of it.