Grip Trilogy Box Set - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,304

he wouldn’t see it was the hardest part of planning this wedding.

I barely hear the preacher’s words, barely register that a roomful of people is listening. It’s not until I hear the word “vows” that I remember I have to speak and this isn’t some dream where I soundlessly spectate. The things I’ve rehearsed for days are nowhere to be found in my mind. They’re like spilled grains of sand on the shore, lost. It doesn’t help that I insisted on going first, but Grip is the best writer I know—no way I’m going after him.

“I had so many things memorized,” I say with a self-conscious laugh. “But I’m so overwhelmed, I can’t think of them.”

I glance up at Grip, who looks at me like every word coming out of my mouth, though unrehearsed, is pure gold.

“So I’ll tell you all the things I didn’t plan to say, but are true.”

I pull in a steadying breath, willing my voice not to shake and my tears to wait until I get through this.

“Grip, I guarantee that I will disappoint you at some point in the next fifty years,” I say. “I’ll infuriate you. I promise you’ll want to strangle me more than once.”

A ripple of laughter through the audience makes me smile, makes Grip smile, too.

“But you’ll be stuck with me,” I say, the smile sliding off my face and the tears pricking behind my lids. “Because I’m never letting you go. I’d be a fool to let you get away. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, the biggest heart I’ve ever known, the one who sees me when no one else does and hears me even when I don’t speak. I’m sure at some point I simply wanted you, maybe I even simply loved you, but we are well past that. Now I need you. You are as fundamental as the breath in my lungs, as much a part of me as the blood flowing through my body. To let you go would be to let go of life, and that’s how long you’ll have me. You’ll have me for a lifetime, a lifetime of laughter, disagreements, battles, triumphs. No matter what comes, know I’ll never leave your side.”

I shift the simple bouquet of blushing tulips and white roses to one hand so I can swipe at the tears streaking down my face. My voice, my words hang in my throat for a moment, crowded with emotions even deeper than the words I manage to utter.

“I vow to stand with you through every circumstance. I promise to pick you up when you fall, to cherish you beyond reason, and to love you without walls.”

When I’m done, I release a heavy breath, relieved to have gotten through it with just a few tears. With a kind smile, the preacher says a few words and encourages Grip to share his vows.

“I feel kind of silly now,” he says with an almost bashful grin, completely incongruous on his handsome face. “After that, some- thing so obviously from your heart, I almost regret writing my vows.”

Here goes. I’m so glad I went first.

“But I know how much you love it when I write about you,” he teases, squeezing my fingers. “So this is my heart given to you in the words I wrote.”

His smile fades until his mouth rests in a sober line.

“My heart given to you completely,” he adds so softy, I’m not sure the congregation hears before he launches into what he has prepared.

“It’s called ‘Still.’”

You ask me today if I love you,

if I take you as my own to have and to hold,

and my heart replies yes.

Always, evermore, even after. Still.

Not just today before a crowd, but when we are alone,

you and I, through years, through pain,

My heart will answer again and again, still.

Ask me in a million seconds, ask me in a billion years,

Do you love me?

And I will say still.

Ask me when we toil, when we rest, when we fuss and fight.

With the taste of anger burning my lips, I will say still.

Ask me when your belly is full like the moon,

and our love has stretched your body with my child,

leaving your skin, once flawless,

now silvered, traced, scarred, I will worship you.

My eyes will never stray.

My heart will never wander,

gladly leashed to you all my days.

I am fixed on you.

Our love is a great river,

the Amazon, the Nile, the river Euphrates,

and my heart is a violent churning

in my chest, swimming upstream,

defying every odd, accepting any dare

To reach you.

To