Chapter 135: To the moon and Back

Tyler's POV

One week later

The bachelor party was all Jake's idea.

Which meant it was well organized, slightly chaotic in ways that felt intentional, and ended with four grown men sitting on the floor of a hotel suite at two in the morning eating room service and arguing about nothing important.

Dylan had arranged the drinks. That was the part nobody had fully accounted for.

Dylan approached cocktails the way he approached everything, with research and enthusiasm and a complete absence of half measures. By midnight we were already half wasted.

Cooper and Atlas were at Dylan's apartment being watched by Dylan's neighbor who had been bribed with the promise of a home cooked meal.

We had no such supervision.

At some point someone suggested a toast and we toasted. Then someone suggested another toast and we toasted again. The specific content of the later toasts became increasingly abstract. At one point Jake stood up and said something about loyalty and the long version of it that I only caught half of but that felt significant. Quin looked at him for a long moment afterward and said nothing and Jake sat back down and they both pretended nothing had happened.

Dylan put his head on Jake's shoulder. Totally relaxed. I watched Quin watching them and a small smile appeared on his face.

Then he turned and caught me watching him.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing," I said immediately .

He held out his hand and I took it.

We sat on the floor of the hotel suite at two in the morning with room service containers between us and Jake half asleep on Dylan's shoulder.

"Tomorrow," Quin said.

"Today technically," I said. "It's past midnight."

He looked at me. " To today."he raised a glass up and finished it's content.

"To today," I repeated after him.

The alarm went off at seven in the morning, but nobody seemed to be moving. I opened my eyes and closed it back shortly after. The alarm went off again at seven fifteen because Dylan had set a backup. But nobody moved again.

It was Jake who finally sat up, looked at the room, looked at his phone, and said in a voice that carried remarkable calm for someone who had consumed what he had consumed the previous evening, "We have two and a half hours to get ready."

That got everyone moving.

The next ninety minutes was chaotic that I suspected I would find funny in approximately two weeks and had no capacity to find funny right now. Quin showered first because his suit required the most time. I showered second and emerged to find Dylan already dressed and doing something precise and calm with Jake's tie while Jake stood still with the expression of someone submitting to a necessary process.

I looked at my suit hanging on the back of the door.

Navy. The shoulder had been fixed. It was right now. I knew it was right because Cassie had confirmed it twice and the tailor had confirmed it once and Quin had looked at it the previous week with critical eyes.

I put it on and looked in the mirror.

Quin appeared behind me in the reflection. His suit was charcoal. The cut was perfect because his cuts were always perfect. He looked exactly like himself and also like a version of himself that had been turned up slightly.

He looked at my reflection.

"Perfect," he said.

"You too," I said.

Dylan took a photo of us in the mirror without asking.

I had to force myself to look away before I tear up looking at my husband to be.

The venue was a garden in the kind of place that existed in the city if you knew where to look. Walls of old stone covered in something green. A clear sky that had decided to cooperate. Chairs arranged in two sections with an aisle between them that felt both intimate and significant.

I stood in the small room off the entrance with Cassie.

She was in a dress the color of something between green and grey that she had chosen herself and that suited her. Her hair was up. She looked beautiful and slightly emotional and was working hard to conceal the second part. I couldn't blame her, I asked fighting same thing.

"Don't cry, I can't afford to cry before getting up there." I told her.

She pressed her lips together. "I'm not crying at the prep. I'm saving it for the aisle."

"That's a plan."

"Mara told me to pace myself."

"Smart woman."

"Incredibly." She looked at me. Then at my suit. Then at my face. Something moved through her expression that she gave up trying to manage. "You look really good Tyler."

"Please not now."

"I'm just saying."

"I know what you're saying and if you say it I'm going to need to redo my face."

She laughed, blinking many times. Then looked up briefly. "Okay. Okay I'm fine."

"Good."

"I'm completely fine. I'm so proud of you," she said.

"Cassie."

"Done. I'm done." She offered her arm. "Ready?"

I looked at the door. Beyond it was the garden and the chairs and the people and at the end of the aisle was Quin standing with Jake and looking at the door waiting for it to open.

I thought about Vegas. I think that night was the best mistake of my life, and signing the contract with Quin was the best decision ever.

I took Cassie's arm.

"Ready," I said.

The door opened.

I couldn't take my eyes off him. No amount of clapping could distract me from looking at him.

He was standing at the end of the aisle and he was looking back at me. The looks that make my knee go weak and I could never get used too.

This was right.

Cassie walked me down the aisle.

At the end she stopped. Then she put my hand in Quin's and said absolutely nothing which was more than anything she could have said.

She went to her seat.

Quin looked at my face. "Okay?" he said quietly.

"Perfect," I said.

The vows were ours.

We had written them separately and not shared them beforehand. I had written mine more than five times before I was able to finally write the one I was ok with. That was when i understood why we had to write it separately.

Quin went first.

He looked at me and spoke in a calm and collected voice.

"I have spent most of my life," he said, "being very good at control. At knowing the variables and managing the outcomes and staying several steps ahead of whatever was coming." He paused. "And then you walked into a hotel in Las Vegas and every system I had built stopped working correctly."

Something in my chest moved.

"I didn't know what to do with that for a long time," he continued. "I told myself it was practical. A solution to a problem. Something that could be contained and managed and ended on a specific date." He looked at me steadily. "I was wrong about all of it."

He paused.

"What I know now is that you are the most honest person I have ever met. Not because you never hide things but because eventually you always say the true thing. Even when it costs you." He held my gaze. "I know that you are braver than you believe yourself to be. I know that you love with more of yourself than you think is safe to give." Another pause. "And I know that whatever comes next, I want to face it beside you. Because you are the person I want beside me. You always have been."

The garden was completely still.

"I love you Tyler," he said simply. "That's the whole of it."

I breathed.

Then it was my turn.

I looked at him and found the words I had written at one in the morning two weeks ago when the apartment was quiet and it was just me and Cooper asleep on the floor and the truth of what I wanted to say.

"I grew up believing that love was something you earned," I said. "That people stayed because leaving hadn't become worth the effort yet." I paused. "I spent a long time waiting for you to realize you'd made a mistake and leave."

His expression didn't change. He was listening the way he always did, focusing all his attention on me.

"You never did," I said. "You kept showing up in every version of showing up that existed." I paused. "You made me believe that staying was something that could just be true. Not earned. Not conditional. Just true."

I held his gaze.

"I love you," I said. "I think I have since High school. I love who you are when nobody is watching and I love who you are when everyone is. I love that you told me I love you for the first time like it was a fact you were reporting." I exhaled chasing the tears threatening to spill. "I want to spend the rest of my life in whatever version of ordinary we can build together."

His jaw moved slightly. "I love you to the moon and back Quin McKenzie" I said.

We exchanged rings. With I DOs.

"You may kiss your Groom." The officiating minister said.

Quin didn't waste a single moment. He kissed me in the garden with everyone watching and I kissed him back and somewhere behind us Cassie made a sound that was definitely crying regardless of what she would claim afterward.

The dinner was warm and loud and full of people who loved us.

William McKenzie found me between the main course and dessert. He looked like himself but softer around the edges. He put his hand briefly on my shoulder.

"I owe you an apology," he said. "A proper one."

"You've already..."

"Not properly." He held my gaze. "I tried to pay you to leave my son. I used money as a measure of what you were worth to him." He sighed. "I was wrong. About the measure and about you."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"You make him happy," William said simply. "I can see it. I've been able to see it for a long time." He paused. "Thank you for not taking the cheque."

I almost smiled. "Thank you for offering it."

He frowned slightly.

"It told me what I needed to know," I said. "About how much you loved him."

He held my gaze for a moment. Then nodded once. The William McKenzie version of something considerably larger.

Eleanor appeared beside him and put her hand through his arm and smiled at me the way she always had.

"Welcome to the family," she said. "Properly this time."

The dinner was slowly winding down. Music from Dylan's playlist which was exactly right in every way Jake would never admit to publicly was playing.

I found Quin standing to one side near the garden wall looking at the room. At his parents' dancing, Jake and Dylan at a table with their chairs turned toward each other, Cassie and Mara laughing about something with their heads together.

I went and stood beside him. I followed his gaze around the room.

quietly he said, "I wish she was here."

I didn't need to ask who.

"She would have loved this," he said. "All of it." He paused. "She would have cried at the vows and pretended she wasn't and given an unsolicited speech at dinner that would have been the best part of the night."

My throat tightened.

"She'd have teased you mercilessly," I said. "For at least the first hour."

"Longer," he said. "She never did anything briefly."

I looked at him. The garden light catching the side of his face. The quiet grief sitting in him the way it lived now. Present but not consuming. Something he carried rather than something that carried him.

He looked at me and held my gaze for a moment.

"I think she'd tease the love out of you," I said. "If she was here. She'd make some comment about your face during the vows and you'd pretend to be irritated and she'd laugh and that would be enough."

Something moved through his expression.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "That's exactly what she'd do."

I took his hand and held it.

We stood at the edge of our wedding and looked at everyone we loved in the same room.

Cooper was somewhere inside with Atlas causing some kind of minor incident. The sound of their barking could be heard from outside.

Quin squeezed my hand and I squeezed back.

"Come on," I said. "Dance with me."

He looked at me. "I don't dance."

"You danced at the reception."

"That was required."

"This is also required."

"By whom."

"By me," I said. "Your husband."

His face brightened at the word husband.

He let me pull him toward the music.