Page 61 of The Bourbon Bargain

Hi,she mouths at me.

I love you,I mouth back.

The ceremony becomes a blur as we listen to the Judge talk about the covenant of marriage and the seriousness of love. Soon enough, he’s asking if we will honor and cherish one another, in sickness and in health, in poverty and in wealth, and to be true to each other in all things until death alone shall part us. We both take turns repeating after him with little difficulty. I would promise Paige so much more in this life and into the afterlife as well.

My attention returns when he asks for the rings and it’s time for the vows. Paige and I decided to write our own, since we had already read the traditional vows at our Las Vegas elopement, and if we are getting a second chance to do it, we are going to make it personal to our relationship.

“You’ll be needing these,” Payton says over my shoulder, handing me a black velvet ring box that holds Paige’s delicate diamond wedding band and her engagement ring. He smiles and shakes my hand, proud to have this important role in our second wedding. I take the rings and stack them on the end of my pinky for safekeeping before handing the box back to Payton.

I look back and see Paige repeating the actions, taking my thick gold band from Alex and sliding it onto her thumb on her side of our waterfall altar.

“Paige, please place the ring on Hayes’s finger and recite your vows.”

Paige follows his direction, her small hands shaking as she places the ring on my finger and takes my hands in hers.

Her eyes are misty as she looks up at me, her face framed by her dark waves woven with delicate flowers.

“Hayes, you are a force of nature that changed my life forever, and I couldn’t be more grateful that you took a chance on a silly debutante one night not that long ago in this very garden.”

She pauses then, her words growing thick. Her eyes shimmer with unshed tears, and I run my thumbs across her knuckles in reassurance. She grips my hands in hers and steadies her voice before continuing.

“You can be unrelenting in the pursuit of what you want, and you take no prisoners along the way. You are demanding because you know your worth. You hold yourself to the highest standards and ask the same from others,” she begins.

I smile and nod because it’s the truth. But I can’t help but wonder if her vows will highlight all my less-than-admirable qualities.

“I hope I can learn to be more like you in that regard because I admire you so much.” She smiles and I wonder at my luck to be blessed with a woman like her. “But with me, you have always been kind, compassionate, and generous. Your love is unfathomable, and you make me feel cherished with every action, everyjust becausepresent, and the simple day-to-day activities that you still manage to put me first in.”

I can’t take my eyes off of her. She is a radiant queen of grace and forgiveness, and listening to her tell our closest friends and family of our love has me enraptured. I am so fucking grateful she gave me a second chance to prove I could put her first, that I could see past my greed and realize how badly I had treated her, and prove that I will never repeat that bullshit again.

“I promise to ask for what I want, even when it’s hard. I promise to love you back as fiercely as you love me. I promise to protect you and our life together from anything the outside world may throw at us. I promise to watch silly eighties movies with you and refrain from calling them old or calling you old by extension.”

This gets a chuckle from the crowd. I smile right along with them.

“I promise to give you unlimited second chances and show you grace when you need it. I promise to hear you out and stick around when life gets difficult instead of running away from the hard times. I promise to be open to every new possibility with you.”

She gives me a sly wink at that, and her smile is one of cheekiness I hope others will overlook as bridal happiness.

“But most of all, I promise to fight with you and for you and for us every day of our lives. I love you with all of my heart and I love this life we are building together.”

A tear slides down Paige’s cheek and I reach up and gently brush it away, cupping her face in my hand for a moment longer, just soaking in her heartfelt words and hoping I can do her justice with my own.

“Hayes, please place the rings on Paige’s finger and recite your vows,” the Judge tells me next.

I take Paige’s left hand and slide on her rings, holding her hands in mine and looking deeply into her eyes so I can get through this very public display of my very private thoughts.

“Paige, you are goodness and grace incarnate. You are a benevolent goddess walking this mortal plane, and the fact that you somehow saw me and deemed me worthy of your attention despite being wholly undeserving will be my debt to repay forever. You make me better just by allowing me into your stratosphere, and I will never take that for granted.”

I hear a few sniffles in the crowd and think they must be left over from Paige’s vows because there is no way anyone would have any sort of empathy for the man I was before she entered my life.

“I fell in love with you the moment you walked into this garden, escaping from a society event just like I had.”

This time the crowd chuckles for me, and I feel brave enough to continue.

“You started to change me for the better almost instantly. I knew I couldn’t be the man I was before meeting you any longer because that man was undeserving of your time, attention, or love. I wanted all of that more than anything else I’d coveted in this life.”

I stroke my thumbs across her knuckles again and compose myself for the rest of what I need to say. When I meet her eyes, they are endless wells of love and devotion I do not deserve, but she is giving them to me anyway.

“I promise to put you first and above anything else in this life. I promise to make you ask for what you want until it’s second nature and always give you what you need when you can’t. I promise to love you with every breath in my body, in this life, and forever after into the next. I would know you in any lifetime, and in any iteration, because you are a part of me that is walking this world outside of my body. I will love you forever, angel.”

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