Chapter 31 Grayson
GRAYSON
The string lights look like scattered stars caught in the oak branches, and I'm standing on my own porch trying to remember how to breathe. Forty chairs face the swing I hung during our year apart. I still check the chains. Abbie doesn’t entirely trust my DIY confidence.
"You're staring at that swing like it owes you money," Wren says, adjusting the collar of her blazer. She went full dramatic with the outfit, burgundy velvet, gold jewelry, a folder tucked under her arm that probably contains her officiant notes written in what she calls "aggressive calligraphy."
"I'm making sure it's level."
"It's been level for three weeks. You've checked it eleven times. I counted."
"Twelve," I correct. "I checked it this morning while Eleanor was screaming about her milk." Four months old, and she already has stronger opinions about breakfast than either of us.
Wren grins, that sharp expression she gets when she's about to say something designed to make me squirm. "The ordained minister thing was supposed to be a joke, you know. I did it because Abbie said you'd never actually let me officiate, and I wanted to call your bluff."
"Surprise."
"Surprise yourself. You asked me." She tilts her head, studying me with the same intensity she probably uses on ad campaigns. "Why'd you ask me?"
Wren doesn’t want a rehearsed answer. She’s earned a real one.
"Because you never stopped being on her side," I say. "Even when her side meant hating me."
Wren's expression flickers, softer underneath the bravado. "I didn't hate you. I wanted to. Would've been easier."
"But?"
"But Abbie loved you. Still loves you. And I couldn't hate the thing she loved most without hating part of her." She smooths her blazer, clears her throat. "Also, you have excellent taste in champagne, and I respect that about a person."
I laugh, surprising myself. The nerves have been coiling in my chest all day, but Wren has this way of cutting through tension like it personally offended her.
"The guests are arriving," she says, nodding toward the side yard where Elliot is helping Az carry flower arrangements to the chairs. Gardenias and white roses.
"How many?"
"Forty, like you wanted. Plus one extremely opinionated infant who I'm told has already rejected three outfit options."
Twenty minutes until the ceremony. I check my watch again. Our courthouse wedding was real. I knew what I wanted. I just failed to keep showing her.
I married her because I loved her. I'm marrying her again because I've finally learned how to show it.
The porch door opens behind me, and I turn expecting more guests or maybe Wren with some crisis about the seating chart.
Instead, I find Richard Montgomery standing there in a gray suit, looking about as comfortable as a man facing a firing squad.
"Grayson," he says.
"Richard."
"Quite a property," he says without turning around. "Abbie tells me you built most of it yourself."
"Restored, mostly. It was already here. Just needed someone to put in the work."
He nods slowly, like the words mean more than their surface. Maybe they do.
"I owe you an apology," he says. "A real one, not the half-measures I've been offering."
"Richard—"
"Let me finish. Please." He turns to face me, and I see it again, the exhaustion, the regret, the desperate hope I first glimpsed in that hospital hallway.
"I treated your marriage like a business arrangement.
The expansion funds, the international investment.
I told myself I was helping. Supporting my daughter and her husband.
But what I was really doing was trying to buy influence in a relationship that wasn't mine to control. "
"I returned the money," I say. "The week she left. Every cent."
"I know. Andrew told me." His mouth twists. "I was furious, at first. Thought you were throwing my help back in my face. Took me months to realize you were trying to start clean. Build something that was actually yours."
"I should have refused it from the beginning."
"Yes. And I shouldn't have offered it the way I did, with conditions attached, with expectations, with the understanding that you owed me something in return.
" He takes a breath. "I did the same thing to Abbie.
Her whole life. Treated her like she was fine because she didn't demand attention the way Delaney did.
Told myself she was the strong one, the capable one, the daughter who didn't need me hovering. "
"She is strong."
"She is. But that doesn't mean she didn't need a father.
" Richard's voice cracks. "I favored Delaney because she was easy to worry about.
Her problems were obvious, and solving them made me feel necessary.
Abbie was harder. She handled things herself.
She didn't ask for help. So I convinced myself she didn't need it, and I missed... I missed everything."
"She's not asking you to fix it in one conversation."
"I know. I'm not here to be forgiven." He straightens slightly, squaring his shoulders like he's preparing for something difficult.
"I'm here because my daughter is renewing her vows, and I want to be present for it.
Really present. Not performing fatherhood for an audience, not worrying about appearances, just here. Watching her be happy."
I study him for a long moment. The gray in his hair that wasn't there two years ago. The lines around his eyes. The way he's holding himself like a man who's finally stopped pretending he has all the answers.
"You're here," I finally say. "Second row. That matters."
"It's the least I can do."
"It's a start." I turn to face him fully. "But Richard, she gets to decide the pace. She gets to decide how much access you have, how fast you rebuild, whether you rebuild at all. If you push too hard, if you make her feel guilty for needing boundaries—"
"I won't." He holds my gaze steadily. "I've learned that lesson. Slowly, painfully, but I've learned it."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"That's all I need right now. You being here, trying." I offer my hand, and after a moment, he takes it. "Welcome to the family. Again."
The porch door opens, and Wren sticks her head out. "Richard, I think they need you inside. Something about the seating arrangement."
Richard sighs, that particular sigh I recognize from every father forced to deal with wedding logistics, and releases my hand. "Duty calls."
He heads inside, and Wren watches him go before turning to me with raised eyebrows.
"That looked almost civil."
"He apologized. For real this time."
"Richard Montgomery, genuine human emotion. Should I check the weather app for signs of hell freezing over? Come on. Ceremony starts in ten, and you're radiating nervous energy so hard I can feel it from here."
She's right. The nerves have escalated from coil to earthquake, and my hands won't stop moving, adjusting my cuffs, running through the vows I wrote at 3 AM two weeks ago while Eleanor screamed through a growth spurt.
Wren guides me to my place in front of the swing.
Elliot and Az sit in the third row. Halo and VTG colleagues fill the other chairs.
And then the music changes, just Elliot's voice rising from the third row, no instruments, something soft and steady he wrote for us, and the back door opens.
Eleanor chooses that exact moment to protest being held by anyone who isn't me.
She's been doing this all morning, content in my arms, outraged in anyone else's.
All I know is that the moment I handed her to Wren for the processional, she started making the face that precedes full nuclear meltdown.
"Take her back," Wren hisses, practically shoving my daughter at me. "Take her back before she hits the decibel level that shatters glass."
I catch Eleanor against my chest, and she immediately settles back to sleep, her tiny fist finding my shirt collar like she’d already figured out how to own me.
"I'm holding the baby," I tell Wren. "During my wedding. This is happening."
"You're holding the baby because she's a tyrant who refuses to accept that other people exist." Wren grins despite herself. "It's fine. It's actually perfect. Very on-brand for you two."
Eleanor makes a sound that might be agreement or might be a burp. Hard to tell with her. The music swells slightly, Elliot's voice carrying across the yard, and I look toward the door. Abbie.
She’s in simple white, her blonde hair loose. Her green eyes find mine. She stops in front of me, and Wren clears her throat.
"Dearly beloved," she begins, her voice carrying clear and strong across the assembled guests, "we are gathered here to witness something I honestly didn't think would happen, so mark your calendars."
A ripple of laughter moves through the crowd. Abbie shoots Wren a look that's half warning, half affection.
"I'm kidding. Sort of." Wren adjusts her notes. "I've known Abbie for eight years. I've worked with her, cried with her, watched her build something incredible from nothing. And I've watched her love this man even when that love cost her everything she had."
Her voice softens slightly, the performative edge dropping away.
"Marriage isn't a contract. It's not a business plan or a merger or whatever metaphor people use to pretend love is something you can control.
It's a choice you make every single day, to show up, to stay, to keep choosing each other even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard."
She looks between us. "You two have been through things that would have destroyed most couples. And instead of staying destroyed, you rebuilt. Not the same marriage you had before, but something stronger. Something earned."
Abbie's hand finds mine, her fingers threading through my own.
"Abbie, you wrote your own vows," Wren says. "Whenever you're ready."
Abbie takes a breath. Her eyes are bright, and I can see her fighting to keep her composure.