51. Oath of Devotion
Chapter fifty-one
Oath of Devotion
Micah
Winter moves faster once we're engaged.
At Thanksgiving, Dex's mother spends most of dinner asking questions about the wedding while Dex insists we have plenty of time, then changes his mind halfway through dessert and starts a shared note titled Things We Absolutely Need, which somehow includes cake flavors, first-dance songs, and whether fog machines are “classy if used responsibly.”
By Christmas, we have a venue.
The gallery is an old industrial building that was converted without trying too hard to hide what it used to be. Exposed brick. Steel beams. Concrete floors. Huge windows. White walls broken up by rotating local art.
Dex walks into it for the first time, turns in a slow circle, and says, “Okay, this is aggressively us.”
He's right.
By New Year's, we've chosen food, argued about invitations, and established that Dex's definition of a small wedding is approximately thirty people larger than mine.
In January, he informs me that he wants a real wedding cake.
Not cupcakes.
Not some trendy dessert table.
A tiered cake that we cut together because, apparently, there are traditions he has spent his entire adult life pretending he thinks are stupid when the truth is that he wanted them for himself.
That surprised me.
A few weeks later, he tells me he wants to wear white.
That one surprises me enough that I ask him twice if he's serious.
He is.
By Valentine's Day, the wedding is close enough that our dining room table has become a rotating storage area for contracts, seating charts, envelopes, fabric swatches, and one increasingly abused notebook Ronan started using to keep us from forgetting things.
Dex and I spend Valentine's night at home with everyone else.
At some point, he stretches his legs across my lap, looks down at his engagement ring, and says, “Six more weeks.”
Something in my chest shifts.
Not nerves exactly. It's more like my body finally understands that the date we've been discussing for months is close enough to become real.
Then March gets here.
And suddenly I'm standing in an art gallery in a black suit waiting to marry him.
The space looks different with people in it.
When we first toured it, I noticed the bones of the room first—the height of the windows, the way the black beams cut across the ceiling, where light fell on the brick and where it disappeared into shadow.
Now warm strands of lights run overhead, and candles line the windowsills. The flowers are simple, mostly white with dark greenery, low enough that nobody has to talk around them at dinner.
We didn't try to make the room softer than it is.
We just gave it warmth.
I like that better.
Ronan stands beside me near the back entrance to the ceremony space and adjusts one of his cuffs for the third time.
Then he looks at my face.
“You're clamping your jaw hard enough that I can see the muscle moving.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
He says it without argument, which somehow makes it more annoying.
A guitar chord rings through the gallery.
Pachelbel.
Technically.
The melody is recognizable beneath distortion and a heavier bass line, rebuilt into something that sounds like it belongs in the middle of a rock set instead of a string quartet.
Ronan tilts his head toward the sound. “They actually pulled it off.”
“Dex threatened them.”
“That explains it.”
His hand settles briefly against my shoulder, firm enough that I feel it through the suit.
“You ready?” he asks.
I look toward the ceremony area, where I can see the backs of rows of chairs and the people turning toward the music.
“Yeah.”
We start walking.
I hadn't planned on Ronan walking me down the aisle when Dex first suggested a processional.
Mostly because I didn't think I needed anyone to.
I wasn't making a statement. I simply assumed I would walk myself.
Dex disagreed loudly from the kitchen.
Cami suggested Ronan.
Ronan looked at me, waiting instead of assuming.
The answer was easier than I expected.
So now he walks beside me through a room full of people who know exactly what he is to me, even if there isn't a simple word that contains all of it.
He's not replacing my parents.
I don't need him to.
He's Ronan.
He's someone who knew me before Dex and I had language for whatever was happening between us. Someone who has watched my life change and become part of that change himself.
Maybe this is what a party is supposed to be—not people who complete you, but people who make sure you don’t have to walk into the next encounter alone.
By the time we reach the front, I'm glad I didn't walk alone.
Ronan squeezes my shoulder once before taking his place beside me.
Cami stands between our two sides in a dark green dress, papers in one hand. Her eyes are already suspiciously shiny.
Griffin waits opposite Ronan, where Dex asked him to stand.
Cami catches my eye.
“You okay?” she whispers.
“Yeah.”
“Good, because I'm barely holding my shit together.”
Griffin laughs softly. “We're thirty seconds in.”
“I know. It's not promising.”
The music changes.
People begin turning toward the back.
I turn with them.
That's when I see Hannah.
For a second, my brain refuses to fit her face into this room.
She's sitting several rows from the back beside Abigail, and both of them are already looking toward the front.
Toward me.
Hannah notices the exact moment I recognize her. Her eyes widen slightly, then soften, and one hand lifts in a small wave.
Abigail smiles too.
Smaller.
More uncertain.
But she's here.
They're both here.
My chest tightens so abruptly that the next breath takes effort.
Nobody from my family was invited.
Not because I wanted to punish them, and not because I expected them to come. I just wasn't willing to spend the weeks before my wedding wondering whether an invitation would become another opportunity for them to reject me.
Hannah and Abigail weren't invited either.
I didn't know they would want to be.
Apparently, Abigail still following me online was enough.
Hannah smiles again.
I realize I'm smiling back.
Then movement behind them catches my attention.
Dex appears at the end of the aisle between his parents.
Everything else drops out of focus.
I knew about the white suit. I stood beside him when he chose it.
Seeing it now is different.
The whole thing is white, sharp and clean against his tattoos, with black details and black boots keeping it from ever looking too polished.
He even bleached the color out of his hair for today, leaving it almost entirely pale blond and styled back enough that I can see the earrings Cami helped him choose.
Without the bright color in his hair, there is somehow more of him to look at.
His face.
The lines of ink climbing above his collar.
The silver at his ears when he turns his head.
The black engagement ring on his hand where it's looped through his mother's arm.
I feel my heartbeat in my throat.
Dex looks down the aisle.
His eyes find me.
I give him the smallest nod I can manage.
His face softens.
Then his parents start walking him toward me.
His mother is openly crying, and his father is smiling in a way I've never seen before. Dex keeps looking at me as they come closer, and by the time he reaches the front, I'm aware of my heartbeat everywhere—against my throat, under my ribs, even in my hands.
His mom kisses his cheek before letting him go, then turns and hugs me.
“Take care of each other,” she says against my shoulder.
“We will.”
His dad hugs me next.
“You're already family,” he says quietly as he pulls back. “This just makes the paperwork catch up.”
That gets dangerously close to breaking whatever control I have left.
Dex notices immediately.
He takes my hand and murmurs, “Don't you fucking start.”
“You're already crying.”
“I'm allowed. I'm wearing white.”
Cami clears her throat loudly enough to get our attention.
When we face her, she looks down at the papers in her hand and takes a breath.
“I wrote something much longer than this.”
Dex smiles. “I'm shocked.”
“Quiet. I'm officiating.”
His grin widens.
Cami looks back down for a second, then abandons the paper almost entirely.
“But I realized nobody here needs me to explain Micah and Dex to them. And I definitely don't need to explain them to each other.”
Her mouth trembles before she gets it under control.
“So I'll just say this. Marriage doesn't make something real that wasn't real before.
You two have already been choosing each other for a long time, mostly in ways that aren't very glamorous. Work schedules. Groceries. Campaign nights. Bad days. Making room for each other when neither of you was especially good at asking for it.”
She looks at Griffin for a breath.
Dex squeezes my hand.
“Today is just the day you get to stand in front of everyone who loves you and say you're going to keep choosing it.”
She looks at me.
“Micah, you're first.”
I turn toward Dex.
I rewrote my vows twice because the first version sounded too polished, like something I thought a person was supposed to say at a wedding rather than something I would actually say to him.
“You make it very difficult to be alone.”
Dex's eyebrows rise.
A laugh moves through the room.
I smile. “I mean that as a compliment.”
“Good recovery,” he says quietly.
“You fill space. You always have. Rooms. Conversations. Silence. For a long time, I thought I needed quiet to feel settled, and then you moved into my life, and I eventually realized quiet wasn't the same thing as peace.”
His fingers tighten around mine.
“I don't want less of you. I don't want you easier, quieter, or smaller.
I want the person who leaves shoes in places shoes should never be.
I want the music and the bad jokes. I want whatever version of you exists fifty years from now when your knees hurt, and you still refuse to admit you're old.”
Dex laughs, but tears have already gathered along his lower lashes.
“I want the loud parts and the quiet ones. I want to keep building a life with you, and I choose you exactly as you are.”
Cami looks toward Dex. “Your turn.”
He takes a breath.
“I had jokes.”