51. Avery #2
“Last night. I haven’t opened the attachment.” Declan reaches for his phone on the table and angles the screen toward me before touching it. “He wrote that the Tuesday field check moved to Wednesday. I can open it now, or it can wait until tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow. The club can wait today. Everybody knows where you are.” I watch him dismiss the preview without opening the file.
Months ago, he would have read the message, solved the problem, and told himself keeping me happy required hiding how much attention he gave it.
He wants to open it. I see the effort every time his thumb stops above a notification, and I also hear him tell me what called for him before he chooses whether to answer.
He lived that way for five months before the clerk’s printout entered my bag.
When I returned to Bell & Rourke three days a week, he never asked me to shrink the schedule—not even after the first day left me crying in the garage because I loved my office and hated missing Nora.
The next morning he packed the pump bag from my list and kept quiet while I checked it twice.
Our separate attorneys put the terms into an agreement we signed last week, including the monthly page Declan wrote at this table. He read every page with the screen reader, marked what he did not understand, and asked his lawyer—not me—to explain it.
“Take her upstairs,” I tell him when footsteps cross the front porch and June knocks three times before using the code I gave her for today.
“Put Nora in the nursery, then get dressed in the guest room. Don’t let anybody convince you my bedroom belongs to everybody because we’re getting married in eight hours. ”
Declan rises with Nora against his chest and pauses near my chair. “Where do you want me after the ceremony?”
The question has lived between us throughout six months of guest-room nights and the invitations I gave when I wanted him beside me. I’ve cleared half the closet in my bedroom. I haven’t handed him the answer until now.
“With me,” I say, taking the white-capped key from the counter and closing his fingers around it. “The bedroom is included after we come inside tonight. The office remains locked. You text before bringing club work through the door, and if I ask for the room alone, you leave it.”
Declan looks at the key we both know was never about the bedroom. “The cap could come off it.”
“No.” I kiss Nora’s head, then Declan’s mouth while our daughter sleeps between us and makes the contact awkward enough to keep it honest. “That key brought you back into this house under my rules. I’m not hiding where we started so the wedding photographs look prettier.”
He curls his hand around the key. “I’ll see you outside.”
June enters as he disappears upstairs, carrying two garment bags and enough authority to evacuate a courthouse.
Roxanne follows with breakfast, Tessa brings the gold bands, and Nadia arrives last with a pen she claims has better ink than anything June owns.
They fill my kitchen and leave my choice alone inside it.
The cold has split my knuckles, and Declan left his mother’s balm open beside the pin box with the lid resting loose enough for my hands.
By noon, the backyard holds everyone I invited, bundled in coats beneath the canopies June ordered after threatening the November weather.
Cruz and Gage set the last chairs while Hutch and Bones argue about whether folding furniture can be tested through impact.
Roxanne holds Nora near the front in her green dress.
The old ring has stayed off my hand since the safehouse, and today a different one waits for it.
June stands at the end of the aisle with the celebrant certificate she obtained the week I gave her the date, though the bright yellow folder makes the document look like a coupon.
Declan waits beside her in a black suit, his back bare of the cut and the patch he has yet to regain, his breath showing every time he lets one go.
His vows rest in both hands. I can see the reading strip tucked behind the pages, and he leaves it in plain view when Bones looks toward him.
The aisle stays clear the way I asked. I cross my own frozen yard in the dress I chose, carrying no flowers because I want both hands free when I reach him.
Nora spots me halfway down and calls from Roxanne’s arms. Declan looks toward her, then back to me, and waits while I walk the remaining distance myself.
June looks at the people gathered behind us. “The first time these two married, they failed to invite me to officiate. That was their first mistake.”
“June,” I warn, though laughter moves through the chairs and keeps the ceremony from becoming punishment dressed in white.
“I was told to keep this short.” She glances at the page, ignores half of it, and looks at us again.
“Everybody here knows how the first marriage ended, so I won’t lie about it.
Avery asked me to marry them today. Declan arrived on time and didn’t argue with my seating chart, which is all the evidence of change I plan to offer.
They want another marriage, and my job is to make it legal before Nora eats Roxanne’s necklace.
Declan, read your goddamn vows before I improve them. ”
Declan places the reading strip under the opening sentence. His hand shakes once. He doesn’t apologize for it or pretend the letters become easy because the words are about me.
“Avery, I will tell you where I am, who is with me, and what my choices could cost you or Nora before somebody else puts the truth in your hands. I will not make you search accounts, phones, empty rooms, or my face to learn whether I lied. If you ask me a question, I will answer it. If the answer embarrasses me, costs money, changes my work, or makes you angry, I will tell you anyway.”
Nora fusses against Roxanne, and Declan looks toward her before returning to the line.
“I will ask before I enter your rooms, change your plans, use your money, touch your body, or make a choice that belongs to both of us. I will read every page and ask for help instead of making somebody else hide what I cannot read. I cannot promise I will never fail you. I promise I will not hide a failure to keep the life I want.” Declan lowers the page.
“You ended our first marriage because I made being my wife hurt you. Love did not make that smaller. I love you, and I choose you knowing marriage never takes away your right to leave.”
He finishes with his eyes on the page and then on me. The vows remain in his hand with the crossed-out words visible from where I stand.
June turns to me and raises the yellow folder when I stare at Declan longer than the ceremony permits. “Avery? You wrote vows too, unless you plan to make him stand there and suffer for the photographs.”
I unfold my pages, look at the first sentence I rewrote beside the bottle warmer, and put the paper down on June’s folder. The words do not need the page, and I refuse to make them clean.