Chapter 30
I hadn’t seen her in three days.
Her rule. “I want you to miss me before we walk down the aisle,” she’d said, smiling like she didn’t know I already did every time she left a room.
Now I stood at the crest of a sand aisle, my toes buried in warm grains that glowed golden in the afternoon sun. My linen suit clung damply to my back—humidity and nerves tag- teamed relentlessly. Behind the driftwood arbor, the ocean breathed in steady rhythms.
Black calla lilies and buttercup- yellow daisies peeked from the wood beams, their petals like tiny horns of light. On both sides, our families formed gentle arcs of anticipation. In the front row, Serenity and Kori sat perched, eyes bright as if I might decide to run.
Wolf squeezed my shoulder once. “Breathe.”
I inhaled salt-thick air and tried to exhale.
Soft music drifted in: mellow strings with a distant steel-drum pulse. The melody felt like a warm breeze.
The flower girls came next—cream-tulle dynamos cinched with yellow sashes. Serenity scattered petals with elegance while Kori launched handfuls at the guests, giggling as she curtsied like a star.
Laughter rippled.
I smiled until the melody changed to a hushed piano line, and my chest tightened.
Everyone rose.
Sunlight followed her down the aisle. Sevyn appeared on her father’s arm, each crystal on her perfect ballgown catching fire.
Her veil trailed as her curls bounced with her walk.
Her pregnant belly, framed in silk and glowed like she’d brought her own sky Her father, broad and solemn, fought tears I could see pooling at his lashes.
Mine overflowed.
The instant her eyes met mine, a wave crashed through me; studio nights, the camera, the speaker banter, movie marathons, the girls, the arguments patched with laughter, the “yes.”
I couldn’t stop the tears.
She smiled softly.
When they reached me, he laid her hand in mine as though entrusting her very soul.
“Be good to my baby,” he said, voice rough as surf on stone.
“I am,” I whispered. “ I will.”
Together, we turned to the preacher under the arbor. The veil fluttered above us; Serenity and Kori sat on the edge of their chairs like miniature ushers.
The ceremony moved on a rhythm that felt older than both of us. Laughter when the wind almost stole a page. My mother dabbing her eyes. Her mother whispering “amen” under her breath. Vows we wrote at the kitchen table at 2 a.m. and pretended we weren’t crying over.
I went first.
“Sevyn,” I said, voice steadier than I felt, “from the moment you called me Batman through a speaker, you rebuilt my life in ways I didn’t know were broken.
I promise to guard your peace, lift your dreams, and earn the ‘dad’ our daughter already gave me.
I will always be your Batman, your defender, your home. I choose you every day, forever.”
She sniffed, laughed, cried in the same breath, then replied.
“Kasen,” she began, voice soft and electric, “you showed up for me when I was just trying to survive. You embraced my chaos, learned my love language and even my passwords. I promise to be soft where the world is hard, to drag you away from your computer when it thinks it owns you, and to kiss you every day like we’re stealing second base.
I choose you—in this life, and if God’s feeling petty, the next one too. ”
Laughter rolled through the chairs. The preacher beamed. “If anyone here can show just cause why this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony?—”
Before he could finish, Kash’s deep voice cut across the breeze. “Please save it. I’d hate to ruin these nice people’s beach day with blood on Sev’s wedding.”
A low ripple of laughter broke the tension. Angel smacked his arm. “He means congratulations.”
“I mean that too,” Kash conceded.
The preacher cleared his throat. “ Then by the power vested in me?—”
Wolf stage-whispered, “— and by Batman.”
“—I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the preacher finished, smiling. “Kasen, you may kiss your bride.”
I didn’t hesitate. I lifted her veil with hands that finally stilled and kissed my wife as the ocean roared its approval.
When we parted, Serenity shouted, “Again!”
So I kissed her one more time under the sun and sea.
An hour later, the sun was starting to set, turning the whole beach gold. String lights blinked on over the reception area, soft against the sky. Plates were scraped clean. Champagne flutes; some with juice—clinked. Shoes had already started coming off.
“Alright y’all,” Steph’s voice rang out from the mic, way too gleeful to have been trusted with it. “It’s time for the father–daughter dance. Plural. You know this family complicated.”
Laughter rolled over the sand.
Sevyn’s father stood, offering his hand to his daughter like she hadn’t been stepping on his shoes in the kitchen since she was six. She took it, veil gone now, dress a quiet storm of sparkle moving through the dusk.
I looked down at Serenity. “You sure?”
She nodded, solemn as a judge. “I’m ready, Dad.”
I took her little hand and led her onto the makeshift dance floor—a rectangle of wood laid over sand, rimmed in flowers. Across from us, Sevyn and her father found their place, the ocean breathing behind them.
Luther Vandross Dance With My Father Again began playing.
Sev’s father pulled her in; her hand rested over his shoulder, belly a gentle curve between them. His eyes were wet again. She was grinning up at him, the kind of grin you give the first man who ever held your hand.
Serenity placed her feet on top of mine like we’d practiced in the living room.
“Ready?” I whispered.
“Ready.”
We swayed.
She rested her head against my stomach, little fingers fisted in my jacket. Every few seconds she’d look up to check if she was doing it right. She was. Even if she wasn’t, I would’ve told her she was.
Over her head, Sevyn caught my eye.
Her cheek was pressed to her father’s shoulder, her lashes damp, her smile soft and private. The look we traded said everything: thank you and I see you and this is exactly how it was supposed to be.
The song faded. Applause rose. Sevyn kissed her father’s cheek; I spun Serenity once, slow and careful, and she laughed loud enough to carry back to the water.
Steph’s voice came back through the speaker. “Now…for the first dance. Husband and wife. Batman and his Pilates princess.”
Wolf whooped. My mother dabbed at her eyes again and Angel elbowed Kash when he reached for his phone like he didn’t already have thirty videos.
I met Sevyn in the center.
Up close, the crystals turned into constellations. She smelled like ocean and perfume and the last three years of my life.
“Hi, wife,” I said.
“Hi, husband.”
My First Love by Avant ft Keke Wyatt started playing.
I slid one hand to the small of her back, careful of her dress, careful of our son. She laced her fingers behind my neck and stepped in, letting the weight of the day settle between us.
We moved.
On another night, somewhere else, it might’ve been clumsy. Here, it felt like we’d been doing it forever. Her forehead tipped against mine.
“You cried,” she murmured, teasing and tender all at once.
“I did,” I confessed. “I’m not ashamed.”
“Good,” she said, smiling against my cheek. “I like you soft.”
We turned slowly, the horizon doing its own slow burn behind her shoulder. Serenity and Kori were swaying near the edge of the floor with Kasey between them. Our fathers were arguing about grills again in low voices. Steph was already crying into Angel’s shoulder while Angel pretended she wasn’t.
“Look at us,” Sevyn whispered.
I looked.
At her.
At us.
At everything it took to get here.
“Yeah,” I said. “Look at us.”
The rest of the reception moved in a happy, salt-aired blur. We ate, we laughed, and I finally got to see Steph and Kasey tear up the dance floor together while Wolf tried and failed to keep up.
“Time for the cake!” my mother announced, gesturing toward the table where the starlight-sparkled cake sat waiting.
I led Sevyn over, one hand on her lower back, the other holding her hand. Up close, her face was a little flushed, her breathing a bit more heavy.
“You okay?” I whispered near her ear.
“He’s heavy today, Batman,” she murmured, leaning into me. “But I’m not missing my cake.”
We stood behind the table, both our hands gripping the silver server. The crowd gathered around, phones up, Serenity and Kori right at the front, eyes glued to the frosting.
We pressed down, the blade sliding through the first layer.
Pop.
Sevyn’s body went rigid. Her grip on the server tightened, then slackened completely.
“Kasen,” she breathed, her voice reaching a pitch that made my internal alarm system go red.
I looked down. A dark circle was spreading fast across the white sand beneath the shimmering hem of her ballgown.
“Oh,” Kasey said from the front row, her eyes dropping. “Oh, it’s time time.”
The crowd erupted.
“My water just broke in a five-thousand-dollar dress,” Sevyn whispered, half-laughing, half-gasping as the first real contraction hit her.
I didn’t even wait for her to walk. I scooped her up and headed for the truck. Wolf was already running ahead to open the doors; Kash was yelling at people to get out of the way like he was clearing a path for a motorcade.
The next few hours were a different kind of blur. The shimmering dress was traded for a thin hospital gown. The ocean breeze was replaced by the smell of antiseptic and the steady thump-thump-thump of our son’s heart on the monitor.
Sevyn was a warrior. She gripped my hand through every contraction, her knuckles turning white, her eyes locked on mine. I stayed right there, breathing when she breathed, coaching her through the math of the pain just like she’d coached me through everything else.
“You got this, Sev,” I whispered, wiping the sweat from her forehead. “Almost there.”
“I’m gonna… kill you… for doing this… the first time,” she panted, her eyes squeezing shut as the final stage began.
“I know,” I said. “I’ll let you.”
The room got busy. Doctors, nurses, the bright overhead lights.
“Okay, Sevyn, one big push,” the doctor said. “I can see the top of his head. He’s got a lot of hair.”
I leaned in, determined to be the rock she needed. I looked down, wanting to see the first glimpse of our son.
I saw the hair. I saw the crowning. I saw the reality of a human being entering the world in a way no YouTube video could ever prepare me for.
The beeping of the monitors started to sound like they were underwater. The bright lights turned into white spots.
“Kasen?” I heard Sevyn’s voice, distant and worried.
The last thing I remembered was the doctor saying, “Almost there!” and then the floor rose up to meet my face.
Thump.
I woke up to a rhythmic, mechanical hum.
My head throbbed. I blinked, my vision slowly clearing. I wasn’t on the floor anymore. I was lying in a narrow hospital bed, a thin white sheet pulled up to my chest.
I turned my head.
Right next to me, in the main hospital bed, sat Sevyn.
She looked exhausted, her hair a little wild, her skin glowing in the soft morning light filtering through the blinds but she was smiling.
The most beautiful, tired smile I’d ever seen and in her arms was a small, blue-blanketed bundle.
“Glad to see you’re awake,” she said softly. “The floor didn’t put too much of a dent in that big head of yours, did it?”
I sat up too fast, winced, and eased back down. “I fainted?”
“You went out like a light, Batman,” she teased, though her eyes were wet. “Missed the grand finale.”
I looked at the bundle in her arms, my heart stopping and restarting in the same breath.
“Is he…”
“He’s perfect,” she whispered. She shifted, adjusting the blanket so I could see a tiny, scrunched-up face, a head full of dark curls, and a pair of hands that were already curled into little fists.
She reached out, her hand finding mine across the space between our beds.
“I have someone who would like to meet you,” she said, her voice breaking just a little. “Our son… Kasen Jr.”
KJ.
I reached out, my fingers trembling as I touched the soft, velvet skin of his cheek. He shifted in his sleep, a tiny sigh escaping him that sounded like the best thing I’d ever heard.
I looked at my wife, my brave, beautiful, incredible wife and then back at the boy who carried my name and her heart.
“Hi, KJ,” I whispered, the tears finally winning. “I’m your dad.”