Page 26 of From the Ashes (Redwood Bay Fire #2)

ZAHIR – ONE MONTH LATER

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Captain Lucy Padilla whispers to me, her eyebrows raised.

I lean closer to her. “You’re the only qualified person we know. Do you want to stop?”

She huffs, blowing a tendril of brown hair off her forehead. “Nah. I guess we’re all here now, huh?”

“You’ve got this,” Colt whispers back to her.

“Debatable,” she says with a wink. “Let’s give it a try, though.” She clears her throat and steps back, raising her voice for everyone else gathered on the beach to hear. “Dearly beloved,” she begins.

“Uhhh…” I glance around. From the second row, Sawyer shakes his hand in a ‘so-so’ motion. “Maybe something less boring?” he suggests in an exaggerated whisper.

Captain Padilla arches an eyebrow. “Hey there, all you gays, theys, and girly pops,” she tries again, completely deadpan.

That gets a raucous cheer from the crowd and two thumbs up from my ever-helpful colleague. I chuckle and roll my eyes, looking back at my fiancé, who’s also grinning. So long as he’s having a good time, that’s all that really matters.

“Excellent,” Captain Padilla says, shaking her head as she looks down at her notes. “Okay, we are gathered here today to celebrate the marriage of Zahir Delacroix and Colton Ross. An event, I’m assured, that has been close to twenty years in the making and not, as it might appear, one single month.”

“Shotgun wedding!” Lili coughs into her fist.

I sigh. “I’m applying for a transfer,” I mutter.

Colt squeezes my hands. “I think you’re stuck with them, baby.”

Isn’t that the truth?

I have to act disgruntled by their heckling, because that’s what will make the One-Thirteen happy. Well, some of them. Yara and Lochlan are already weeping joyfully into their handkerchiefs. Captain Valentine is beaming with pride. Lieutenant Flores is diligently filming everything. And young Teddy is watching the whole event unfold in awe.

That’s pretty much how I feel.

I have to hand it to my husband-to-be. When he sets his mind to something, there’s no stopping him. It really did only take him a month to put together a dream beach wedding for us, declaring that he’d wasted far too much time already, and he wasn’t going to wait a minute longer than was necessary before making an honest man out of me.

Once we realized the police captain was a licensed wedding officiant, all we needed was to book a time and date with the town council, hire a bunch of chairs, and organize a flower arch to complete our ocean backdrop. Caterers will arrive shortly to provide drinks and a BBQ so we can party the night away as the sun sets.

It couldn’t be more perfect.

All I really cared about was having the most important people attend. We picked a Saturday when the first watch of the One-Thirteen wasn’t working, obviously. But I was thrilled when our new honorary member, Drayton Hendrix, made time in his schedule to join us as well. As predicted, Yara agreed to be my maid of honor, and all the guys—including Lili—declared themselves groomsmen. As we haven’t bothered with any formal attire, that basically just meant their only responsibility was to throw me a messy bachelor party.

I think that suited everyone just fine.

Colt’s new friend Portia really did mean it about being the flower girl, and took great pride in walking down the aisle, scattering a whole tree’s worth of Sakura petals to guide my way. She was gracious enough to share the attention with the littlest members of the wedding party, though, allowing Nevaeh and Dashel Adams and Rebecca Quick to walk down before her, holding hands and waving to a chorus of ‘Ahhhh’s.

Of course, Teta was the one to give me away, with my parents and a few other family members sitting proudly among my rowdy work family. Before taking her seat, my grandma kissed my cheek and told me how happy she is for me and Colt.

“True love always finds a way,” she whispered into my ear.

I’ve basically been fighting back tears ever since.

I think Preston was very touched when Colt asked him to be his best man. It warms my heart to see him thriving in Redwood Bay and building the kind of friendship group he never found in all his time on the East Coast. Although, I have noticed Portia and Preston making eyes at each other. Colt calls them his ‘two Ps in a pod.’

That’s either going to result in the most spectacular power couple this town has ever seen or a disaster to put even earthquakes to shame. There won’t be any in between.

His parents are here, which I’m moderately surprised by. Although, I did hear Mrs. Ross say more than once earlier that this just wasn’t what she’d ever imagined for her son, dabbing her eyes like she’s at a funeral instead of a wedding.

Mrs. Bloom replied that she understood. Of course, most parents aren’t blessed with a son-in-law as handsome, kind, and talented as me, so she must still be so overwhelmed with gratitude. Mrs. Ross didn’t have much to say to that, and Miss Margot Fonteyn growled until the other woman scuttled away.

I’m not sure things are ever going to be smooth between us and the elder Rosses. But at least Colt still has some kind of relationship with them. The fact they’re here means they’re trying, so that’s a start.

It’s clear to see, though, that since rejecting their grand life plan, he’s never been happier. The wedding isn’t the only project he’s been putting his mind to. We’ve also been house hunting, not considering places with less than four bedrooms, and on a mission to visit the animal shelter once we’ve moved in together so we can start growing our family right away. Colt saved up a truly staggering amount when he was in New York, so we’re in the extremely privileged position of having enough for not just a deposit, but we can also pay part of the sum upfront, leaving us with a very reasonable mortgage.

That way, he won’t have to worry about the drop in his salary. After some consideration, he’s decided not to completely walk away from law, after all. He has already left his father’s firm, which I’m sure will be a bone of contention between them for a long time to come. But that’s Fredrick Ross’s cross to bear.

Colt’s plan is to open up a small practice with the sole intention of providing legal advice at reasonable rates to local businesses and charities. I know he feels like he abandoned Redwood Bay when he fled to the East Coast, and the idea of giving back to the community has breathed new life into his career. It’s obvious his dad pushed him into becoming a lawyer, but he is amazing at what he does, and when he’s representing people he actually cares about, he knows it will bring him joy.

He also knows now how important a balance between work and the rest of his life is. No more fourteen-hour days to bury who he really is. A regular nine-to-five won’t just leave room for me and the family we hope to build, but other pursuits as well.

Once his leg is fully healed, Colt absolutely intends on obtaining the necessary certifications so he can officially start teaching surfing to kids. He’s already got three guaranteed students, after all.

And we’re finally going to travel.

We spent so many hours on this beach, talking about the future. I think a part of me clung to those childish daydreams, and that’s why I put my own future on hold for so long. I shouldn’t have, but now it doesn’t matter. We’ve got our bucket list of places to visit, not just to surf at, but that’s definitely where we’re starting.

The honeymoon won’t be for another couple of months. We’re waiting until the fall because by then his leg should be back to full strength, but that’s also the best time of year for surfing in Japan.

It might seem a little strange to some people that a themed restaurant where he almost died should now be such a source of comfort and inspiration to him, but that’s Colt. After spending most of his life repressing anything his parents deemed as frivolous, he’s now embracing joy wherever he finds it. There’s something gentle and deeply spiritual about Japanese culture that he wants to celebrate in his everyday life.

To him, Japan has become a symbol of his rebirth, but he’s very conscious of not becoming one of those Westerners that fetishizes the country. So we’re planning on immersing ourselves there for several weeks to learn all we can, starting with surfing on the shores of Miyazaki before traveling to the Sakurayama Park in Gunma to see the winter cherry blossoms, visiting Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo in between.

He’s already started learning the language, which the staff at the Jiyū Sushi Bar have been greatly amused with helping him practice. As much as his recovery will allow him, he’s been volunteering with the restaurant’s clean-up operation after the quake. And he won’t admit the amount, but I know he also made a substantial donation to their repair fund that’s going to help cover what their insurance didn’t.

Because that’s the kind of man he is. The man I’m wholeheartedly choosing to spend the rest of my life with. He’s curious and sweet and caring, willing to put others before his own needs at almost every opportunity. I still catch him referring to himself as a selfish, manipulative bastard sometimes, but that’s all part of the image his parents tried to mold him into. He’s still carrying some guilt around as well for the way he behaved when he was eighteen, which again, really wasn’t his fault.

I don’t care how long it takes. If I have to spend the rest of our lives proving to him that he’s a good man who has been completely forgiven, that’s what I’ll do. It’s why one of my only requests for the new house is to hang my charcoal study of him up in our bedroom. I know that’s asking a lot of him to be vulnerable like that, but the world deserves to see how beautiful he is, inside and out. By displaying the work in our bedroom, it will still be private. But I want him to see himself every single morning the way I do.

His response to my request was to strike a bargain, because as previously stated, he’s still a damn lawyer. I kind of love that, but when he said he’d hang that charcoal study in our house so long as he could put on a long overdue gallery showcase of my work in public…I knew I was in trouble.

Everything significant I’ve ever painted since I met him has been about us and our relationship in some form or another. My natural instinct has always been to keep all of that completely private, just in case anyone ever worked out some intimate detail they shouldn’t. It’s taken me several days since his proposition to realize that’s just not our reality anymore. There’s nothing left to hide, and all my man is asking to do is be allowed to show me off.

Action is his way of showing love, after all. It’s not enough for him to say the words or marry me or tattoo my name on his skin. He needs the whole world to see it. Or at least Redwood Bay. So I’ve cautiously agreed to a little display at the town library to begin with. But he’s already talking about organizing a charity auction for the pieces I’m not interested in keeping as well as any I’d like to create specifically for the purpose of displaying and selling.

Is it terrible to be excited that strangers might want to donate money to good causes in order to hang pieces in their homes that are snapshots of my soul? Works that are my truest, messiest, most earnest representations of how Colt and I previously existed in this world?

I hope not.

We deserve to be seen after all this time cowering in the shadows. Which is why throughout the rest of our future home, I want photos of us everywhere. We might have missed fifteen years together, but now that Colt and our relationship are finally out of the closet, we’re going to make up for lost time. We’ve even started a couple’s Instagram account that I’m sure is entirely nauseating, but I couldn’t care less. On my own account, I never even showed my face. But life is for living and when my time comes, I want a million memories to look back on and smile at.

In the meantime, I finally freed the dogeared strip of photos from the pages of my high school yearbook, gave it a frame, and displayed it in my living room. I didn’t even have to ask—Colt has already demanded the strip gets pride of place in our new home. I look at those two na?ve kids, knowing they had no idea what was to come, but so incredibly grateful that they made it in the end.

When I think of all the heartache we both suffered over so many years, it’s hard to believe we finally arrived here. The odds were against us from the very beginning. But I think that only proves how strong our love truly is, and that we were destined to be together. Colt likes to talk about a thread that always bound us, even when we were on opposite sides of the country. Neither time nor distance could keep us apart forever, though, and now forever is what we’re committing to spend together.

The past haunted me for so long, and the future didn’t seem like it was going to be much better, so I was just floating through the present like driftwood from a shipwreck, bobbing aimlessly on the waves. Now my soul has been reunited with its other half, I can’t wait to sail through life with Colt by my side, ready to face anything the world throws at us. There’s nothing we can’t overcome so long as we remain honest and true.

No more hiding.

Of course, we have to finish getting married first.

“Right,” Captain Padilla says, looking warily around the congregation. “If there’s anyone here who knows something we don’t and thinks this marriage is a bad idea, speak up now. Otherwise, this train is leaving the station.”

I wondered earlier why Mrs. Bloom had situated herself beside Colt’s mom. As I glance their way, I see her subtly place her hand over Mrs. Ross’s. Miss Margot Fonteyn wags her tail. I grin and look back at my man. No one says a thing. Even the One-Thirteen know when not to joke around.

“Phew,” I whisper.

“I wasn’t worried,” Colt murmurs back, making my heart ache even more. Of course he wasn’t.

“Fantastic,” Captain Padilla says with genuine relief. “In that case, I now pronounce you two husbands for ever and ever! You may now celebrate with a kiss. But keep it PG-13, guys. We’ve got kids present.”

Our little corner of the beach goes feral as the music from the speaker starts to play and I kiss Colt as my husband for the first time. It’s difficult to accomplish with how much we’re both grinning, but somehow we manage it.

Technically, we still have to fill out the paperwork. But little does my new husband know, I’ve already had the most important thing signed. With everything we’ve had to authorize recently, his autograph was easy enough for me to steal a copy of.

I can’t wait until later when I reveal my present to him, the one I snuck out to organize last night. A matching tattoo of his signature on my hip, declaring to the world that I’m his for the rest of time, just like he’s mine.

Our love is the greatest masterpiece I could ever imagine. A lifetime in the making, and yet somehow, we still have a lifetime yet to celebrate it.

He’s the sunshine sparkling on my ocean. For so long, I thought our love had been lost. We just had to find our way back to each other to reignite the spark. After that, our shared destiny was free to rise from the ashes, stronger than ever before.

The earth can shatter, and the sky can fall. But nothing can stop us now.

This love is going to last for all eternity.

Thank you so much for reading Zahir and Colt’s story!