29. Killian
— ? —
Killian
The ferry horn sounded as we rounded Brant Point, and Ivy threw another handful of flower petals into the wind with unholy glee.
“More!” she demanded. “I need more petals!”
Tessa handed her another basket, and Ivy resumed her enthusiastic distribution of flowers across the deck. The petals caught the golden light of the setting sun and drifted over the water, a trail of pink and white marking our path.
The ferry captain, a weathered man named Harold who had been marrying couples on this route since before I was born, cleared his throat.
“If everyone’s ready?”
I looked at Sabrina. She was wearing a simple white dress that the wind kept pressing against her curves, her hair loose around her shoulders, her eyes bright with unshed tears. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Ready,” she said.
“Then let’s go get remarried,” I said.
We stood facing each other on the open top deck, the island sliding past behind us, our family arranged in a small semicircle around us. Mom was already crying. Dad was doing his stoic thing, but his eyes were suspiciously shiny. Tessa and Sully stood shoulder to shoulder, grinning.
“Dearly beloved,” Harold began, and then paused. “Well, family and one very enthusiastic flower girl. We’re gathered here to witness the renewal of vows between Killian and Sabrina Kerrington.”
“More petals?” Ivy asked hopefully.
“Not yet, sweetheart. Wait for the important part.”
I took Sabrina’s hands in mine. They were trembling slightly, or maybe that was me. Probably both.
“I’ve been asked to keep this brief,” Harold said, “because the ferry has a schedule and also because these two have apparently already said everything they need to say in private. So, without further ado, Killian, your vows.”
I took a breath. I’d written these down, revised them more times than I’d admit to, memorized them, and promptly forgotten every word the moment I looked into Sabrina’s eyes.
“I had a speech prepared,” I said. “It was very good. Structured. Organized. I even made a backup copy in case I lost the first one.”
“Of course you did,” Sabrina said, smiling.
“But I’m going to throw all of that out and just tell you the truth.”
I squeezed her hands and let the words come.
“When I was twenty-five, I had my life completely figured out. I knew exactly where I was going, exactly what I wanted to achieve, exactly how to get there. And then I met you, and you destroyed all of my carefully laid plans, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Her smile wobbled slightly.
“You are the one variable I could never account for,” I continued. “The one factor that changes every equation. Before you, my life was optimized for efficiency. After you, my life was optimized for love, which is much messier and much more difficult and infinitely more rewarding.”
“Nerd,” she whispered.
“Your nerd. Forever.” I took another breath.
“I’ve spent my whole career building systems and solving problems and trying to understand how things work.
But loving you isn’t a system I can optimize or a problem I can solve.
It’s a practice. It’s a choice I make every single day, and it’s the most important choice I’ll ever make. ”
I reached up and wiped a tear from her cheek.
“I promise to keep choosing you. When you’re brilliant and when you’re difficult. When you’re laughing and when you’re crying. When you’re right next to me and when you feel a million miles away. I promise to show up, every single day, with my whole self, and to do the work of loving you properly.”
“Killian,” she breathed.
“I also promise to eat your fish stew without complaining, even though it tastes like seawater and regret.”
She laughed through her tears, and the sound was everything.
“I promise to keep lists of everything about you, because remembering the details is how I show love. I promise to build you things, even when the things are ridiculous, because making things for you is another way I show love. And I promise to be present, actually present, not just physically in the room but mentally and emotionally here, because you deserve a husband whose brain stays in the room.”
I lifted her hands to my lips and kissed them.
“I love you, Sabrina Kerrington. I’ve loved you since the day we met, and I’ll love you until the day I die, and if there’s anything after that, I’ll love you then too. Thank you for giving me another chance. I won’t waste it.”
Harold dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief. “That was beautiful. Sabrina, your turn.”
Sabrina let the silence sit, her eyes bright. Then she smiled.
“Well,” she said. “That’s going to be hard to follow.”
“You don’t have to-”
“Shush. I’m vowing.”
I shushed.
“Killian Kerrington,” she said. “You are the most infuriating, obsessive, spreadsheet-making, list-keeping, prototype-building, awkwardly romantic person I have ever met.”
“Thank you?”
“You’re also the kindest, most loyal, most genuinely good person I know. You try harder than anyone I’ve ever met. You care more than you let people see. And you love with your whole entire self, even when that self is deeply weird and prone to hyperfocus spirals.”
Sully snorted.
“I didn’t fall in love with you because you were perfect,” she continued.
“I fell in love with you because you were trying. Because you showed up with your messy brain and your chaotic energy and your desperate need to understand how everything works, and you tried to understand me too. And when you failed, you tried again. And again. And again.”
Her voice broke slightly.
“I promise to keep letting you try. I promise to tell you when you’re screwing up instead of suffering in silence.
I promise to argue with you and challenge you and make you earn every single day we have together.
And I promise to love you, all of you, including the parts that are difficult and the parts that drive me crazy and the parts that make lists titled ‘Things I Hate About Sabrina.’”
“That list was out of context,” I protested.
“The context was that you’re a nerd who processes emotions through data. I know. I married you anyway.”
The family laughed.
“I love you,” she said simply. “I’ve loved you for seven years, and I’ll love you for fifty more, and when we’re old and gray and you’re still making spreadsheets about my vitamin intake, I’ll love you then too. So shut up and kiss me.”
“You didn’t let me finish-”
“Kiss me, Killian.”
I kissed her. The family cheered. Ivy threw an entire basket of petals directly at our heads.
“By the power vested in me by the state of Massachusetts and approximately forty years of ferrying people around Nantucket Sound,” Harold declared, “I pronounce you still married. Again. You may continue kissing.”
We continued kissing.
When we finally pulled apart, the ferry was rounding Brant Point, the lighthouse glowing in the fading light, and Ivy pressed herself to the rail to watch our wake unspool behind us toward the harbor mouth.
“The penny,” Sabrina said.
I pulled the penny from my pocket, the one I’d been carrying since that morning. It was old and worn, passed down through my family for generations, used for this exact purpose more times than anyone could count.
“Together?” I asked.
“On three.”
So we’d always come back.
***
That night, back in our bedroom with the windows open to the summer air, I took my wife to bed and loved her the way she deserved to be loved.
There was no rush, no desperation, no frantic need to prove anything or fix anything or make up for lost time. There was just us, together, taking our time with each other.
I kissed her slowly, deeply, letting my hands wander over her body with the reverence she deserved. She responded in kind, her touches gentle, her sighs soft against my ear.
“I love you,” I told her, and I meant it with everything I had.
“I know,” she said. “I love you too.”
We moved together in the darkness, finding our rhythm, finding each other. The pleasure was there, but underneath it was the fact of us, two people who had almost lost each other and were choosing, again and again, to hold on.
Afterward, I lay beside her and listened to her breathe.
In and out, in and out.
The most ordinary sound in the world, and my favorite. The sound of my wife, alive and well and right beside me. The sound of the life we’d built together, imperfect and complicated and absolutely worth fighting for.
I pulled her closer and closed my eyes.
And as I drifted off to sleep, I thought that if I could choose any sound to fall asleep to for the rest of my life, it would be this one.
Her breath, her heartbeat, her presence in the dark.
Home.