36. Luisa #2
The reception lasted until midnight.
Birdie had outdone herself, lobster rolls and clam chowder and a wedding cake shaped like a lighthouse.
The grandmothers served as flower girls (their decision, non-negotiable) and had matching windbreakers that said “BUCKLEY WEDDING 2026” on the back.
Sheriff Pruitt gave a toast that made everyone cry.
Gus’s toast made everyone laugh, mostly because he couldn’t get through three sentences without sobbing.
Poppy danced on Wade’s feet until she fell asleep in his arms.
My parents stayed until the last song, my father shaking Wade’s hand one final time with quiet acceptance in his eyes.
And through it all, Wade never let go of my hand.
***
Later, much later, we walked through the quiet streets to the inn.
The same inn where everything had started. Where Wade had stayed when he first came to Bellhaven searching for us. Where he’d proved, night after night and day after day, that he was willing to do the work.
Our room was lit with candles. Someone, the grandmothers, probably, had scattered rose petals across the bed and left champagne chilling in an ice bucket.
“They really went all out,” I said.
“The town has been planning this longer than I have.”
He closed the door behind us. Turned to face me.
“Hi, wife.”
“Hi, husband.”
We stood there for a moment, just looking at each other. The weight of the day, the vows, the rings, the promises, settled around us, warm and permanent.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too. I never actually stopped.”
He crossed the room slowly. Cupped my face in his hands. Kissed me, soft, unhurried, with all the time in the world.
“I’ve been wanting to do that all day,” he murmured.
“You did do that. In front of the whole town.”
“That was different. That was ceremony.” He kissed me again, slow and thorough. “This is just us.”
His hands found the zipper at my back. Lowered it slowly, reverently, the fabric parting inch by inch. The dress fell away, pooling at my feet, and I stood before him in nothing but candlelight.
“Mine,” he breathed.
“Your turn.”
I undressed him slowly, jacket, shirt, belt, everything, taking my time, savoring each revealed inch of skin. When he was finally bare, we just stood there, bodies close but not quite touching, near enough that I could feel the heat rolling off his skin and the want coming off both of us.
“Bed,” he said.
“Bed,” I agreed, already half asleep on his shoulder.
We tumbled onto the rose petals together, laughing as they scattered, as our limbs tangled, as we tried to find a comfortable position and kept ending up in ridiculous ones.
And then he stopped laughing. He braced himself over me and just looked, candlelight sliding over my skin, his eyes going dark and slow, and every hair on my arms stood up at once.
I let myself look back, really look, the way I hadn’t allowed myself to in four years.
He was braced over me on arms that didn’t shake, a flush climbing his chest and a stunned, serious set to his mouth that undid me faster than his hands ever had.
My husband. Mine, in a way four years and a whole ocean of grief hadn’t managed to undo.
He kissed the hollow of my throat first. Then lower, my collarbone, the slope of each breast, putting his mouth everywhere I’d spent four years pretending I hadn’t missed.
When he drew a nipple between his lips I arched clean off the mattress, and the sound that came out of me had nothing tender about it at all.
“You said all the time in the world,” I managed, my fingers fisting in his hair. “I’m revising the timeline.”
He laughed against my skin. “Impatient.”
“Four years, Wade.” I dragged his mouth back to mine. “Move faster.”
His hand slid down between us and found me slick and already aching, and his breath stuttered hot against my breast. “God, Luisa.” Two fingers, slow, curling exactly the way he’d never forgotten, and my hips chased them shamelessly across the petals.
But I didn’t want his hand. I pushed at his shoulder until he rolled onto his back and went where I put him, and the sight of him laid out beneath me, flushed, wrecked, my ring gone from the chain and my body the only thing he could see, was its own kind of vow.
I straddled him. Took him in my hand. Watched his stomach go tight and his breath stagger out of him.
I sank down onto him slowly, inch by inch, both of us gasping, and when he was seated all the way inside me his hands flew to my hips and held on like I was the only solid thing left in the world.
“I love you,” he said, ragged, watching me move above him. “Wife.” Like the word itself took him apart.
“Say it again.” I rolled my hips and felt him shudder beneath me.
“I love you. I love you. I’m going to love you when we’re old and gray and can’t remember our own-” I gripped him from the inside and the rest of the sentence died somewhere in his throat.
Then he sat up beneath me and wrapped both arms around my back, and we were chest to chest, damp skin and crushed petals, his mouth hot under my ear and my nails dug into his back.
It stopped being slow, stopped being careful.
It was married and it was forever and it was also filthy and desperate and entirely, permanently mine.
He worked a hand between us, found my clit, and I came apart with my forehead pressed to his, gasping his name into his mouth. He followed a heartbeat later, my name breaking on his lips, holding me so tightly I could feel his heart slamming against my ribs like it wanted in.
“Every day,” he murmured into my hair, still holding on, still not letting go. “I’m going to spend every single day showing you how much.”
We stayed tangled together a long time, connected, trembling, breathing each other in. Not laughing now. Just wrecked, and wrecked together, and married.
Afterward, we lay tangled in the sheets, rose petals in our hair, his hand tracing patterns on my back.
“Worth the wait?” he asked.
“Worth everything.”
I fell asleep to the sound of his heartbeat, steady and sure, the ring on my finger warm against his skin.
***
I woke to morning light.
The candles had burned down. The champagne was warm. The rose petals were everywhere, in the sheets, on the floor, somehow in my hair.
Wade was still asleep beside me, his face peaceful, his chest rising and falling with deep, easy breaths.
I looked at my hand.
Two rings now. The sea-glass band glowed soft green in the dawn light, the new one, the promise we’d made this time around. And nestled against it, my old gold wedding ring, back on my finger where it had always belonged. Back home.
On the nightstand, catching the light, was a thin gold chain.
Empty now.
He’d worn my old wedding ring against his heart for four years, keeping me close even when I was gone. And now it was back on my hand, and the chain was just a chain, and the symbolism of it hit me so hard I had to press my hand to my mouth to keep from sobbing.
Also on the nightstand, half-hidden under Wade’s wallet, was an envelope.
I recognized the handwriting. The return address.
A letter from the prison. Forwarded twice before finding us here.
Alton Buckley.
I stared at it for a long moment. Thought about what it might contain, apologies, accusations, manipulation dressed as reconciliation. Then about the man sleeping beside me, who had spent four years unlearning every toxic lesson his father had taught him.
The letter was addressed to Wade. I wouldn’t open it.
But I also wouldn’t let it poison this day.
I slid out of bed quietly, picked up the envelope, and set it aside. When Wade woke, he would decide what to do with it.
***
He found the letter an hour later.
We were still in bed, drinking coffee the inn had left outside our door, wrapped in sheets and each other. His eyes fell on the envelope, and I watched his face go carefully blank.
“It came yesterday,” I said. “I didn’t want to ruin the wedding.”
He picked it up. Studied the handwriting. Turned it over in his hands.
“My father,” he said.
“I know.”
For a long moment, he just sat there, holding twenty years of pain in a single envelope.
Then he got up, walked to the trash can, and dropped it inside.
Unopened.
“Wade-”
“He’s not part of this.” His voice was calm. Certain. “He doesn’t get to be in this family. The name Buckley means something different now.”
He came back to bed. Pulled me against him. Kissed my forehead.
“You, me, and Poppy,” he said. “That’s our family. That’s what matters.”
I held him tighter.
Outside, Bellhaven was waking up. I could hear church bells in the distance, seagulls crying over the harbor, the familiar sounds of the town that had become our home.
Inside, I looked at my hand.
The sea-glass ring.
Back where it belonged.