Epilogue
Skye
The vow renewal is nothing like the first wedding.
No five-star venue with crystal chandeliers and ice sculptures that cost more than most people’s cars.
No three hundred guests I barely knew, network executives and industry contacts and people whose names I couldn’t remember even as I smiled for photographs with them.
No designer dress that took six months to make and weighed more than I did.
Just our beach. String lights strung between posts in the sand, swaying gently in the ocean breeze.
Wildflowers everywhere - the same kind he’s sent me every single day since I left, showing up on doorsteps and desks and once, memorably, delivered to the set of the indie film that picked up my screenplay. Thirty people who actually matter.
I stand in a small tent that serves as a makeshift dressing room, staring at my reflection in a handheld mirror. The white dress flows loose around my five-month belly - not hiding it, just accommodating it. My feet are bare. My hair is down, the way he likes it, the way I like it.
I look like myself.
“You okay?” Ellen appears behind me, already in her maid of honor dress - a dusty rose color that somehow doesn’t clash with her personality, which is a minor miracle.
“I’m nervous.”
“You married him once already. This should be old hat.”
“The first time I was young and stupid.” I press my hand to my stomach, feeling the flutter of movement that’s become familiar over the past few weeks. “This time I know exactly what I’m getting into.”
“Or braver.”
“Same thing, maybe.”
Ellen steps closer. Straightens a fold in my dress that doesn’t really need straightening.
Her hands are gentle, careful, and I remember all the times those hands held me together when I was falling apart.
The night I showed up at her apartment with one suitcase and a broken heart.
The weeks she let me cry on her couch and never once told me to get over it.
“When you asked me to do this again,” she says, “I almost said no.”
“What?”
“Last time I stood up for you at a wedding, you ended up on every tabloid in America and I had to hide you in my apartment for a month.”
“That wasn’t the wedding’s fault.”
“I know. I’m just saying.” She meets my eyes in the mirror. “You’re different this time. You know who you are. You’re not trying to become someone for him. You’re just… you.”
I look at my reflection again. And I see it - the girl I was at seventeen, writing in notebooks about changing the world.
The woman I lost somewhere along the way, buried under expectations and image and the slow erosion of being invisible in my own life.
The person I found again, piece by piece, word by word, choice by choice.
“I recognize her,” I say softly. “The girl in the mirror. I missed her.”
“She missed you too.”
Ellen squeezes my shoulders. I blink back tears that I can’t afford - this mascara isn’t waterproof, and I refuse to walk down the aisle looking like a raccoon.
“Ready?” she asks.
I take a breath. Feel my daughter move inside me. Think about the man waiting at the altar, the one who learned to see me, the one who proved that people can change if they want it badly enough.
“Ready.”
***
The sand is warm under my bare feet as I walk toward him.
No father giving me away - I gave myself away the first time, let myself be handed from one man to another like property, like something to be transferred rather than someone choosing her own path.
This time I’m choosing myself. Walking myself down the aisle.
Giving myself to him because I want to, not because anyone else decided I should.
The thirty guests turn to watch me. I see familiar faces - Ellen’s parents, who treated me like a daughter.
Zak, Jayden’s best man, who told me once that he’d never seen his friend fight so hard for anything.
A few colleagues from the Foundation. A few friends from the screenwriting community I’ve built over the past year.
No executives. No investors. No one who’s here because they want something from us.
And at the end of the aisle, standing under a driftwood arch wrapped in wildflowers and fairy lights, is Jayden.
He looks like he’s about to throw up.
It makes me love him more.
I reach him. He takes my hands. His palms are sweating.
“Don’t you dare make me cry,” I whisper. “This mascara is not waterproof.”
He laughs. It breaks the tension. This is us - even at the altar, even in front of everyone, we’re still the kids who make each other laugh at inappropriate moments.
“You look…” He shakes his head. “There aren’t words.”
“Barefoot and pregnant?”
“Perfect. You look perfect.”
The officiant - a friend from my Foundation board, ordained online specifically for this occasion - clears her throat gently.
“We’re gathered here today…”
***
We wrote our own vows this time.
His first.
He takes a breath. I can see his hands shaking slightly where they hold mine.
This is the man who gave speeches to rooms full of investors, who commanded boardrooms and negotiated deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
And he’s nervous. Terrified. Because this matters more than any of that ever did.
“Eighteen years ago, on this exact beach, I promised you the moon.” His voice cracks on the first sentence. He clears his throat, tries again. “I was seventeen, broke, and had no idea how to keep that promise. But you believed me anyway.”
He has to stop. Swallow. I squeeze his hands, give him something to hold onto.
“Then I got everything I thought I wanted - the money, the studio, the name - and somewhere along the way, I forgot that none of it mattered without you.”
The ocean crashes against the shore. Seabirds call in the distance. The string lights sway in the breeze.
“I made you invisible in your own home. I let someone else tear you apart while I stood there deciding whether to believe you. That’s not the man I promised you I’d be.”
I feel tears building. I don’t try to stop them.
“So here’s my new promise.” He takes another breath. “I promise to see you. Every day. In every room. Even when life gets loud and busy and hard.
“I promise to choose you - not when it’s convenient, but when it costs me something.
“I promise to be the first one standing up for you, the loudest voice in your corner, the man who never makes you wonder if you matter.
“I promise to come home. Really come home. Not just walk through the door, but be present. Be yours.
“And I promise to spend the rest of my life earning the second chance you didn’t have to give me.”
His voice breaks completely on the next words.
“You are my gravity, Skye. My home. The reason any of it ever meant anything.
“I loved you when we were kids with nothing. I love you now. And I will love you every day we have left - even when I burn the marshmallows.”
Scattered laughter from the guests. Ellen is crying. So is Zak, though I know he’ll deny it later.
Then it’s my turn.
I take a breath. Look at the man in front of me - the boy I fell in love with, the man who broke me, the person who fought his way back.
“When I was seventeen, I wrote in my notebook that I was going to change the world. I was going to write stories that mattered. I was going to be someone.
“Then I fell in love with you, and I thought that meant I had to become someone else. Smaller. Quieter. The woman behind the man.
“For a long time, I forgot who I was. I forgot that I was the girl who believed in you before anyone else did. I forgot that I had my own dreams worth fighting for.”
I feel our daughter move inside me. A reminder that this isn’t just about us anymore.
“When everything fell apart, I had to find her again. And I did. Not because you saved me - but because I saved myself.
“But here’s what I’ve learned: saving yourself doesn’t mean you have to be alone.
“So here’s my promise.” I squeeze his hands. “I promise to keep fighting - for us, for myself, for the life we’re building together.
“I promise to let you fight beside me, not in front of me.
“I promise to tell you when I’m hurting instead of waiting for you to notice.
“I promise to never shrink myself again - and to never let you forget the woman you married.
“I promise to love you - not the CEO, not the producer, not the name on the building. You. The boy who burned the marshmallows. The man who’s learning to come home.”
My voice catches on the last part.
“You promised me the moon once. But Jayden - you were always the moon to me too. You just forgot to look up and see it.
“I’m glad we found our way back. And I’m not letting go this time either.”
He cups my face like I’m the most precious thing he’s ever held.
“Don’t mess this up,” I whisper.
“Never again.”
The kiss is soft, then deep. Someone wolf-whistles - Ellen, obviously - and we break apart laughing.
The small crowd cheers. Wildflowers scatter in the ocean breeze. The sun is setting behind us, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink and gold, and I think about seventeen-year-old me, standing on this exact beach, believing in forever.
She was right to believe.
***
Later that night. Same spot. Same beach. Full circle.
The bonfire crackles twenty feet from the waterline, just like it did when we were seventeen. The thirty guests have dwindled to the closest friends and family, passing around bottles of wine and bags of marshmallows.
I lean against Jayden, his hand resting on my belly. I can feel the baby moving - our daughter, the ultrasound confirmed last month - responding to the warmth of the fire.
“I’m trying to be romantic,” Jayden says, gesturing at the scene. The blanket. The wildflowers. The cheap beer in the cooler.
“You’re succeeding. It’s annoying.”
He laughs. The sound rumbles through his chest, vibrating against my back.
“I mean it. You’re very annoying when you’re romantic. It makes it hard to stay mad at you.”
“Good. That’s the plan.”
I grab his hand suddenly. Press it to my stomach.
“There. Feel that?”