Page 78 of Binding Their Hearts

She’d nailed that one like she knew the voices herself. But she must’ve worked hers out ages ago. He’d only started figuring his out when Henry slowed time for them. When he’d turned this room into a magical one. Henry, not Jay—he worked the magic. He coaxed out Jay’s true voice.

“But Jay knows himself now. More every day, I think.” Nat stood in front of him, staring at him like no one else in the room existed, even with the rustling in the front row as Ollie and the rest shuffled down to leave a seat open. “Love gave him the courage to speak up for himself and to walk away from people who refused to respect the boundaries he set.”

Hums and snaps of agreement popped up around the room. Nat bent forward, secret party gossip style. “I am so proud of you, Jay. Can’t even find the words for how much, but I promise I’ll keep trying.”

“I’d like that.” He matched her whisper, only a teeny-tiny bit shakier.

“Henry. Alice.” Nat shed the softness, her face stern as she sized up his partners. “Will you give Jay the space he needs to grow, protect his sensitive soul, embrace his playfulness and curiosity, and show him all the love that should have been his from the start?”

Alice wrapped her hand around his arm and squeezed. “I will.”

Henry rested his hand at the nape of Jay’s neck, rubbing tight little circles with his fingertips. “I will.”

They sounded so sure. Dozens of people heard them promise. The pick me voice in his head bedded down like a barn cat in straw, all cozy and stretching.

The corner of Nat’s lip curled, and her eyes sparkled. She lifted her chin and looked past him. “Then I guess you’d better get these three married already. They can’t keep their hands off each other.”

Their friends laughed, not mocking but loving, and he soaked up every decibel of sound. This was how family should be. This was what his family would be.

Chapter thirty-seven

Alice

Alice automatically turned as Henry and Jay did, half listening while Santa talked about the importance of supportive communities for solid marriages. Her neck kept wanting to swivel and check on their sisters, hers and Jay’s, because how had those chatty fiends managed not to spill the beans about coming to the wedding? They were so getting interrogated later.

Jay’s astonishment and downright joy radiated from him, a mini sun beaming beside her. She carried her own glow, maybe smaller, but just as fiery. Their friends cared enough to make big moments happen for them. That they had friends at all, people who showed up—family who showed up, and said you matter to me, was revelatory. Some shared hallucination, because Alice Colvin didn’t have friends. She had coworkers and colleagues and acquaintances.

But now she had everything. A life she couldn’t have imagined before Henry and Jay steered her into their world.

“…traditional ‘love, honor, and obey’ motif would’ve covered the basics, but”—Will shrugged and sighed with exaggerated resignation—“these three insisted on being more specific and personal about their declarations of love. Given that it’s their wedding, I thought we’d allow the grooms and bride a few minutes to express their devotion.”

Vows. Oh god, they’d reached the vows part of the ceremony. She didn’t have a copy of hers—in this dress, where would she have tucked it away? Her stick-on demi-cups? So long as her mind didn’t blank, she’d be fine. But this was the minute. This one, right now, with Jay so earnest and sweet, his dark eyes gleaming, and Henry with his soft smile and hooded eyes leading her into the mysteries ahead.

With an extended hand, Will ceded the spotlight. “Jay, if you would start us off, please.”

Jay shifted back a step, and she and Henry naturally gravitated into a triangle with him. A wedding was mostly for the audience—the pageantry, the public commitment—but this part was theirs alone. The room could have been empty, and the words wouldn’t have been a micron less heartfelt.

“In my first draft, I promised to be perfect.” Jay’s hair slid across his forehead as he dipped his head. His charming smile peeked out, spreading with a self-awareness she was growing to love in him. The more he understood himself, the more relaxed and confident he became. “By the third draft, I knew that wasn’t how I wanted to honor our love, setting some impossible standard so I felt like I had to earn every day what you both give me freely.”

So fucking smart. Love wasn’t a contest; they couldn’t win points in it. But this vow exchange, that was a Henry-level foreplay torment. The challenge: listen to Jay pour out his heart without hugging or kissing or devouring him on the spot.

“By the seventh draft—” Jay glanced over his shoulder and stage whispered to the crowd, “Inside every submissive—okay, this submissive—is a people-pleasing high achiever hungry for external validation to shore up the empty spaces where his self-confidence is supposed to be. Find a fabulous dominant or two, but also do the therapy. It helps.”

The silence lasted a second, maybe two, before a low wave of applause and snaps surrounded them.

“Well said,” Henry murmured, and she nodded, her throat too thick to speak. Jay was still their Jay, amazing and marvelous, only now he believed it too. Enough so he could slough off his shame around needing help and encourage others.

Jay shook out, a wriggle all down his body, briefly closing his eyes and breathing deep. “By the seventh draft, I figured out what I wanted to say. And it’s this.”

He reached for them and clasped the hands they offered. His tremors were gone, his grip solid but not clinging. “Henry and Alice, I give myself into your service not because I am damaged or broken but because you see and welcome my whole self. I don’t have to hide from you or pretend to be something I’m not to please you. I love you both with everything I am, and I know now that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

She blinked hard to push back the tears, squeezing his hand with enough force that she really should’ve asked him for a status check-in. Too intense, ease down—she didn’t have to go all hydraulic compressor for him to know he was loved. Beside her, Henry absolutely vibrated with fierce pleasure and a gaze that at any other moment would’ve sent Jay straight to his knees.

Jay nodded at her, then smiled and nodded again, lifting his eyebrows at her.

Her turn. An ice-cold flush of panic sluiced over her. She breathed in. Simple. Just say all the things she’d written down yesterday. She breathed out. Except for the scratched-out bits. And mentally follow the arrows from when she’d rearranged her vows for improved flow after furtively reciting them aloud in the shower with the water running this morning. Seventeen times. On the plus side, her hair had never been cleaner.

She kept hold of Jay’s hand and took up Henry’s. Steady and warm. Grounding. Her firm foundation.

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