Chapter 103 – The Spiritual Wedding

Chapter 103 – The Spiritual Wedding
Eden’s POV

The sky was the color of a held breath.

We reached the beach before sunrise, sand cold under our boots, the air salted and clean. Harper hustled ahead with a blanket thrown over one shoulder and a tote that clinked like a traveling kitchen. Levi carried thermoses. Luca’s free hand found mine in the dim and didn’t squeeze just rested, steady.

Security stayed back, silhouettes where the parking lot ended and the dunes began—near enough that I could feel them, far enough that I could forget them. The ocean kept its own counsel, throwing a hush over everything.

“This is perfect,” Harper said, wind stealing half her words. She dropped the blanket and smoothed it like ceremony depended on corners. “Lanterns here. Thermoses there. Please pretend I’m not crying.”

“You promised coffee,” Levi said, trying for a smirk and almost managing it.

“Coffee,” she echoed, snapping open a lid. “Also cinnamon rolls I did not bake and will lie about later.”

Luca looked at me, at the line where water waited to bloom with light. “Ready?”

“I’m not sure ready exists,” I said. “But I’m here.”

We set the lanterns around the blanket, their low flames turning the sand to honey. Harper fussed the final details into place and then stood in front of us with her phone tucked in her back pocket like an officiant who moonlighted as a sister.

“We’re not doing the usual,” she said, voice steadying. “No aisles, no legal language, no pretending this is about a future that erases the past. This is for the three of you to name what you already are and what you choose again. At sunrise. With too much wind. And me, a hot mess, trying not to sob through it.”

I laughed, a real sound, and the wind tried to snatch it but couldn’t.

Harper nodded to me. “Eden first. Your voice leads.”

I held the ribbon we’d chosen—linen, soft, the color of sand. My hands shook, but they were mine.

“I can’t promise I’ll never wake up afraid,” I said, and the ocean made room for the words. “Or that old ghosts won’t try to tell me who I am. I won’t pretend I’m not changed. But I promise to say when I’m afraid instead of disappearing into it. I promise to choose you when choosing is hard. To let joy in even when it feels dangerous. To let you remind me of small things when I forget them.”

Levi swallowed, eyes bright. Luca didn’t blink.

“I love you,” I said, the words simple as a key turning. “Both of you.”

Wind, wave, heart—everything stuttered, then aligned.

Levi stepped forward, taking the other end of the ribbon. “I promise to listen the first time,” he said, voice rough. “To guard you from anything that hurts, including my own temper. To never make my fear your problem. To stand between you and the world only when you want me there—and to stand behind you when you don’t.”

He tied a loose knot, careful not to pull.

Luca lifted a second strand from Harper’s hands, pale blue like early light. “I promise not to turn your strength into a test,” he said. “To make joy non-negotiable. To remember time is our ally, not our judge. To hold you without holding you back. To ask before I assume. To stay.”

He threaded the blue through Levi’s knot and mine, fingers deft, and tightened just enough that I felt it.

Harper blew out a shaky breath. “Okay. Now the part where I’m supposed to say things wise people wrote a long time ago, except you’ve already said the wise things. So: tie your lives together the way you’ve tied this ribbon, and when it gets wet—because it will—retie it. That’s all a life is anyway. A thousand small re-tyings.”

Levi huffed a laugh. Luca’s mouth tilted. I pressed the linen to my pulse and felt it catch a rhythm.

“Vows sealed,” Harper said, softer. “Kiss your person—people—before I keel over.”

Levi leaned in first, careful as if my mouth were a bruise. Luca kissed the corner of my smile, brief and sure. The three of us rested our foreheads together, breath braiding in the thin light, and the day came up over the water like a promise it intended to keep.

We sat on the blanket while the sun climbed. Harper poured coffee into warm hands. Levi declared the cinnamon rolls “almost too good,” and Harper declared him “almost tolerable.” Luca set the speaker low—no early-2000s pop, to Harper’s theatrical despair—and something instrumental drifted between gull cries.

I looked at the ribbon knotted around our wrists and didn’t think about collars or cuffs or the metallic click of locks. This was fabric and choice and the simple permission to be held.

“Sunrise suits you,” Luca murmured.

“Don’t get used to mornings,” I said, and he smiled like that was the first real joke I’d made in months.

My phone, face down near the thermoses, buzzed. Once. Again. The name on the screen turned the new light colder.

I answered. “We’re on the beach.”

“I’m sorry to call now,” she said, voice too careful. “There was a transport this morning. An altercation on the route to the evaluation facility. Daniel Cross is unaccounted for.”

The world narrowed to a point.

“How long?” Luca asked, already moving, already scouting the horizon as if the ocean might give the right answer.

“Forty minutes,” Morales replied. “State Police are on it. I’ve alerted your security team; they’re locking down the perimeter. Do not come to the courthouse. Do not move without your detail.”

Levi’s jaw set the way it does right before action. “Copy.”

“We’re leaving the beach,” Luca said. “We’ll be home in ten.”

“Text me when you’re inside,” Morales said. “And—Eden?”

“I’m here,” I managed.

“You did not cause this,” she said, the words brisk and mercilessly kind. “He will be found.”

The call ended. The waves did not care.

Harper’s face had gone white, but her hands moved—folding the blanket, capping thermoses, tucking the speaker away. “We go,” she said, voice steady out of nowhere. “We go now.”

Security figures unspooled from the dunes, converging without being called. One handed Levi an earpiece. Another took point toward the lot. The linen at our wrists tugged, and I realized I had to let go to move.

I slid the knot to my palm, wound the ribbon twice around my fingers. Not a tether. A token.

Levi looked at me. “You okay?”

“No,” I said honestly. “But I’m not running.”

“Good,” he said. “We’re not either.”

Luca caught my gaze. The sunrise made his eyes almost the color of the sky. “He doesn’t get this,” he said, angling his chin toward the brightening water, the coffee, the knot. “He doesn’t get any part of this.”

“He took months,” I said, breath shaking as I stood. “He doesn’t get our morning.”

We moved as a unit—Harper on my right, Luca on my left, Levi half a step ahead—toward the cars, toward whatever waited. The sun cleared the horizon, clean and unapologetic.

The ribbon warmed in my hand.

We had retied.