57. Re-Roll For Vows
Chapter fifty-seven
Re-Roll For Vows
Griffin
There are easier ways to propose to a woman you're already married to.
I know this because I've considered most of them over the last month.
Dinner would have been easy. The house would have been easier. I could have waited until everyone else went to bed, pulled the ring out in the kitchen, and avoided spending the last forty minutes wondering whether Cami can somehow hear the small box rattling around in my jacket pocket.
Instead, I suggested a hike.
Not a real hike, according to Cami.
Apparently anything under two miles with a maintained trail and a parking lot is “aggressive walking with scenery.”
She's probably right.
Still, the view is worth it.
The trail opens onto a rocky overlook above a valley just beginning to turn fully green again after winter.
Snow still sits higher on the mountains in the distance, bright against an absurdly blue April sky.
The air is cool enough that Cami steals one of my gloves halfway up because she refused to bring her own.
“You know,” she says as we reach the overlook, “you could have just admitted you wanted to take pictures of mountains.”
“I can see mountains from our house.”
“Not like this.” She turns in a slow circle.
Her hair catches the wind and blows across her face. She's wearing leggings, hiking boots she bought three years ago and claims this justifies owning, and my old station hoodie over a T-shirt.
Nothing about the moment is formal.
Good.
Neither are we.
She walks toward the railing and leans against it, looking out over the valley.
I stand behind her for several seconds.
My pulse is ridiculous.
I have walked into burning buildings with less adrenaline than I currently have standing twenty feet from a woman who has already legally agreed to spend her life attached to mine.
This is stupid.
Also apparently important enough that my hands are sweating.
Cami glances over her shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes narrow.
I should know better than to answer too quickly.
“Your yeah sounded weird.”
“My yeah sounded like yeah.”
“No. It sounded like paramedic yeah. The one where you're technically not lying, but there are seventeen follow-up questions.”
I laugh despite myself.
She turns completely now. “Griff?”
Here goes.
“I need to ask you something.”
Her expression changes.
The same way she looks when she knows I've been carrying something and has decided to wait me out instead of dragging it from me.
I walk closer. “When we got married, you needed health insurance.”
One eyebrow rises. “Romantic opening.”
“Let me finish.”
She presses her lips together.
I can see the smile anyway.
“You needed something I could give you,” I continue. “And I would do it again.”
The humor fades from her face.
“Exactly the same way. I don't regret it. Not the paperwork, not how fast we did it, not any of it.”
Her eyes are already getting brighter.
Fuck.
I'm going to make her cry on a mountain.
Great.
“You told me you weren't changing your name. You weren't moving into my room. You weren't wearing a ring.”
Her mouth trembles.
“I told you all of that was optional.”
“You did.”
“And it still is.”
I reach into my pocket.
Her eyes widen.
The look on her face almost completely derails every word I've practiced.
I manage to get the box open without dropping it down the side of the mountain.
Inside is the ring I have spent an embarrassing amount of time staring at over the last few weeks—a deep blue-green sapphire in a simple setting, dark enough to shift color when the light changes, with small diamonds on either side.
Not traditional.
Not particularly delicate.
Very Cami.
She covers her mouth. “Oh my God.”
“The first time, the marriage solved a problem.” My throat tightens. “Then somewhere along the way, it became the best thing I've ever done.”
A tear slips down her cheek.
I swipe it away with my thumb.
“I don't need to fix anything for you now. You don't need my insurance to survive. You don't need my house. You have your own career, your own money, three other men who would probably help you dispose of my body if I pissed you off badly enough—”
She laughs through the tears. “Probably?”
“Dex is a definite yes. Ronan would ask about evidence disposal first.”
“Fair.”
I take her left hand.
It's bare.
It always has been.
That's the part that nearly gets me.
She told me she didn't want a ring before I had any right to want her to wear one.
I meant it when I told her she didn't owe me that.
I mean it now too.
“This time I want to ask because I love you. Because I want to stand up in front of the people who love us and say it when we're not solving an emergency. I want the party and the pictures and whatever weird shit Dex tries to sneak into the reception.”
Her laugh breaks again.
“And I want you to have a ring if you want one.”
Her fingers squeeze mine, as I drop to one knee.
“So, Cameron—”
“I still haven't changed my name.”
“I know.”
“Just checking.”
I shake my head.
“Cameron, will you marry me again?”
She doesn't hesitate.
“Yes.”
The word comes out wet and laughing and completely certain.
“Yes. Of course I fucking will.”
She launches herself into me hard enough that I have to stand and take a step back to keep both of us upright.
I laugh into her hair and wrap my arms around her.
For a minute, that's all there is.
Her face buried against my neck.
My hand moving over her back.
Wind through the trees.
Her laughing and crying at the same time.
Eventually she pulls away. “You have to put it on me.”
“Right.”
My hands are still shaking slightly when I slide the ring onto her finger.
It fits.
Thank God.
Cami stares down at it.
Turns her hand one direction, then the other.
The sapphire catches the light and shifts greener.
“Griffin.”
“Good Griffin or bad Griffin?”
“Very good Griffin.”
Relief moves through me so hard I laugh.
She looks at the ring again.
“I told you I wasn't wearing one.”
“You did.”
Her thumb traces the band.
“I changed my mind.”
That might be the best thing she could have said.
Then she looks up at me, eyes still damp.
A suspicious little smile appears. “What?”
“Is this because I make more money than you now?”
I stare at her.
She loses it.
Full laughter.
Bent over slightly, one hand gripping my jacket.
I wait.
Eventually she gets herself together enough to look at me.
“You're horrible.”
“You proposed to an executive. I have to protect my assets.”
“You have had that job for approximately twenty-four hours.”
“Still counts.”
“I knew that contract was going to make you insufferable.”
She wraps her arms around my neck. “You love me.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Good.”
She kisses me.
And somehow the second time I ask my wife to marry me feels completely different from the first.
Maybe the first marriage wasn’t a failed roll after all. Maybe this is just the same choice, made again with advantage.
Cameron
Dex screams.
There really isn’t a more accurate word for the noise that comes out of him when I walk into the kitchen and hold up my left hand.
“YOU DID IT.”
Griffin stops behind me. “I did what?”
“You proposed to your wife.”
“Yes.”
Dex grabs my wrist before I can lower it, turning my hand toward the light like he's inspecting a museum piece. “Oh my God. That is gorgeous.”
Micah catches his shoulder before he manages to bend my arm into a position nature did not intend. “Let her keep the wrist.”
“Sorry.”
He does not look particularly sorry.
Ronan, meanwhile, isn't looking at the ring at all. He's looking at Griffin.
Something passes between them that I can't quite read—not surprise exactly, but recognition—and then Ronan's expression softens.
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
I look between them. “You knew?”
“No,” Ronan says.
Griffin scratches the back of his neck. “I asked him if there were any decent, easy trails open this time of year.”
Ronan gives him a look. “You asked for a trail with a view, minimal mud, and enough privacy that Dex couldn't realistically appear from behind a tree.”
“That is not knowing.”
“It was not difficult to infer.”
Dex presses a hand to his chest. “You planned against me?”
“Yes.”
“Rude.”
Micah finally gets a turn with my hand once Dex releases it. Unlike Dex, he doesn't immediately rotate it through every possible angle. He just studies the ring for a few seconds, thumb brushing beneath the band without touching the stone.
“This looks like you.”
That gets me more than it should.
Maybe because Griffin spent the whole proposal making it clear that the ring was optional. Maybe because I remember sitting beside him with the marriage application open and drawing boundaries around everything I wasn't willing to pretend our arrangement was.
No name change.
No moving into his room.
No ring.
Back then, wearing one would have felt like performing a marriage we hadn't actually built yet.
Now Micah looks at the first ring I've ever willingly worn for Griffin and says it looks like me.
“Thanks,” I manage.
He kisses my temple.
Then Dex ruins the moment exactly as expected.
“So when are we getting married?”
Griffin closes his eyes.
And apparently that's how wedding planning begins.
By breakfast the next morning, I have learned that planning a small wedding with four men is somehow more complicated than being romantically involved with four men.
Ronan has an actual notebook in front of him, because of course he does.
“Venue?” he asks.
“I don't know yet.”
“Season?”
I look at Griffin.
He shrugs. “Whenever you want.”
That should not be as attractive as it is, but here we are. “I don't want to wait a year. Maybe summer?”
Ronan writes that down.
Dex looks up sharply. “Can Grave Intentions play?”
“No,” Griffin and I say at the same time.
Micah laughs into his coffee.
Dex looks betrayed. “You didn't even discuss it.”
“We didn't need to.”
“Fine. But I expect DJ veto power.”
“You absolutely do not have DJ veto power.”
“We'll circle back.”
“We will not.”
Griffin's mouth twitches beside me, and I nudge his knee under the table.
“You can be in the wedding,” I tell Dex.