“Just how much I love you,” I murmured.
“Just how much you’re going to walk all over him,” Josh whispered. “Poor guy is going to wake up in ten years and realize he traded one slavery for another.”
Gem swatted him with her bouquet of daisies. “Marriage is not slavery, Joshua. Good God, you have no filter.”
The priest sniffed, his eyes widening at our inappropriate talk.
I took her hand. “I don’t care what it is. I just know that I’m yours, and we better get these vows over with so we can consummate.”
The priest cleared his throat with disapproval, but humor danced in his old eyes. “In that case, let’s carry on, shall we?”
Gem giggled—a wonderful sound that, until I’d learned how to live again, I’d never been privileged to hear. Now, she giggled often. At me. At Fang. At our wonderful life.
I focused on the priest as he welcomed our friends, gave us pledges to repeat, and oversaw the ceremony of vowing our lives to one another.
Gem slipped a gold band onto my finger, and it unlocked the final pieces of my heart.
I slipped a diamond onto her finger and wanted to bow at her feet for choosing me.
And when we kissed, I no longer begrudged what’d happened to me.
I no longer cursed fate for forsaking me.
I thanked it.
I thanked it for giving me hardship.
Because without it, I would never know the value of pure happiness.
* * * * *
“So...you’re a Sands now.” Josh clinked his champagne glass with Gem’s who stood next to me, my arm possessively around her waist. “Random last name. I like Ashford better.”
“Me too,” Katie piped up, her eyes once again full of hearts and rainbows wherever she looked at Josh. “I’d be a happy Ashford.”
I snickered at her less than subtle hint.
They’d been together for seven months now, and he still hadn’t asked her to marry him—even though it was obvious to everyone that he was a goner. Unlike me, when I’d proposed to Gem when we’d first returned to society, he was afraid. Afraid of commitment. Of putting himself out there in case it delivered pain.
I pitied him really.
He didn’t know the meaning of pain. If he did, he’d understand that he was causing himself more by denying the depth of his feelings for Katie and should just man up and claim her already.
Gem sipped her champagne, her gaze trailing over the happy crowd of friends and family as people mingled on our back lawn. We didn’t have a dance floor or DJ. Food had been placed on tables in the shade for grazing all day long. Picnic blankets dotted the grass, and a few lawn games had been set up for when alcohol lowered people’s self-consciousness, and they were ready to have some silly fun.
“I dunno. I rather like it.” Gem wrinkled her nose dramatically before giving me a dreamy look. “Sands reminds me of a destitute prince who gave away so much of himself only to be granted his one true wish.” Her eyes caught mine, making my heart pound.
Josh scowled. “That’s way too soppy for me this early in the afternoon.”
Gem laughed. “Well, you know as well as I do that the police haven’t had any new leads on Kas’s biological or adoptive parents. There’s no mention of him going missing, and no one came forward.”
Josh narrowed his eyes at me. “And you’re really okay keeping the same name that that bastard gave you from a book?”
I nodded, drinking my own champagne, eyeing up the simple wedding cake with vanilla sponge and strawberry frosting. I had visions of smearing that sugar all over Gem’s perfect body and consummating our marriage in as many sticky, delicious ways as possible.
Pushing thoughts of ravaging my new wife aside, I answered my brother-in-law. “Gem and I did toss out a few names when I needed to register for social security and taxes, but...” I shrugged. “As much as I have a complicated relationship with the one I have, I want to keep it. It’s no longer a name they gave me. It’s a name I fought to free.” I grinned coldly. “It’s also a daily reminder that I’m alive and they’re not.”
“You can still be scary, you know that?” Josh shuddered, but his eyes crinkled with mirth. “Just because I let you marry my sister doesn’t mean I approve of you yet.”
“Oh please, you practically booked in the date.” Gem giggled. “You guys hang out more than I hang out with you, Joshy-kins.”
Josh pulled her blond hair. “Hush up, Gemstone. Just because you’re a married woman now doesn’t mean I can’t still chase you around the garden and throw you over my shoulder.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.” He crouched. “Go on...call me that again.”
Gem scurried behind me. “Kas, you have my permission to punch my annoying brother.”