Jake’s POV
I stand in the meadow, and I can't breathe properly.
Tommy shifts beside me, adjusting his tie for the third time in as many minutes. "You good?"
"No." The honesty comes easier than lying. "I'm terrified."
"Good." He grins, and I recognize the expression from my own mirror twenty years ago. "That means it matters."
The words are mine—ones I've said to him a hundred times when fear tried to masquerade as wisdom. Hearing them back feels like confirmation that I did something right in raising him, even when I was convinced I was failing.
Music starts, and everyone stands.
Then I see her.
Adison walks toward me in a dress that somehow makes her look more like herself than any Manhattan gown ever did. Simple. Elegant. Her belly is just starting to show the evidence of our son, and she's not hiding it—she's wearing it like pride, like proof that we built something real out of all the wreckage we created trying to find each other.
The sight of her hits me like falling.
Like that first moment in the barn when she looked at me with defiance instead of fear, and I understood with terrible clarity that Richard Ward's daughter was going to destroy every wall I'd spent twenty years building.
She's doing it again now. Demolishing whatever was left.
Violet arranged wildflowers everywhere—Texas wildflowers in waves of color that move with the wind—and I watch Zachary watching her with an expression I recognize from my own mirror. A man realizing he's deeper than he planned and deciding depth is exactly where he wants to drown.
Maria's crying before Adison even reaches me, and Paige holds Tommy's hand like anchoring, and this small crowd represents everyone who matters.
Everyone who watched us break each other open and somehow forgave us for all the wreckage that was required.
Adison reaches me.
"Hey." Her voice is steady, but her eyes shine.
"Hey." I take her hands, and they're shaking slightly. "You look beautiful."
"You clean up okay too." She smiles, and it's the real one—the one she doesn't perform for anyone else.
The officiant starts talking, saying words I barely hear because I'm cataloging every detail of her face.
The way her hand rests protectively on our son. The way she's choosing me again—publicly, permanently, in front of witnesses who can hold us accountable when geography and fear make us forget why this matters.
"Jake." The officiant's voice pulls me back. "Your vows?"
I pull out the paper I wrote at three in the morning when sleep wouldn't come, and my hands aren't quite steady.
"I promise to show up." The words scrape out raw. "Even when distance feels easier. Even when Texas calls me home and I want to run back to what's comfortable instead of staying in what's complicated."
Adison's eyes are wet, and her grip on my hands tightens.
"I promise to choose you." I force myself to keep going. "Not just today. Not just when it's easy. But every morning when I wake up and every night when I'm scared I'm not enough for what you need."
"Jake—" Her voice cracks.
"I promise to build a life that honors both of us." I fold the paper, meeting her eyes directly. "That doesn't demand you shrink to fit my world or me perform to fit yours. A life where our son gets both parents showing up fully instead of half-present and resentful."
She's crying openly now, and I reach up to brush tears away with my thumb.
"I promise to love you badly at first." The admission tastes like honesty and hope combined. "Then better. Then well enough to survive whatever comes next."
The officiant turns to Adison. "Your vows?"
She doesn't pull out paper. Just stands there holding my hands and looking at me like I'm the answer to questions she's been asking her whole life.
"I'm done being afraid of wanting what I want." Her voice carries across the meadow. "Done apologizing for the fact that what I want is you—a forty-four-year-old cowboy who makes me feel more like myself than Manhattan ever did."
Tommy makes a sound that might be laughter or emotion, and I don't look away from her face.
"I promise to love our son in Texas and in New York." She squeezes my hands. "To visit the ranch and let you visit alone when you need to remember who you are underneath all the compromise."
"Adison—"
"I promise to choose you back." Her certainty sounds like faith. "Every single day. Even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard."
"Then by the power vested in me." The officiant's voice breaks through. "I now pronounce you husband and wife. Jake, you may kiss your bride."
I kiss her, and it tastes like beginning and continuation simultaneously.
The crowd erupts in noise that feels like permission and celebration and the acknowledgment that love doesn't solve logistics but it makes the solving worthwhile.
We walk back down the makeshift aisle as husband and wife, and I think about happiness.
How I'm happy. Actually, genuinely happy in ways I didn't know I could access anymore.
At the reception under string lights and Texas sky, I dance with my pregnant wife and realize with perfect clarity that I married the daughter of my best friend. That I'm going to be a father at forty-four. That Manhattan is going to be my home base for the foreseeable future.
None of it feels like compromise anymore. It just feels like the life I get to live because Adison chose me back.
* * *
Later, when the celebration winds down and we're alone in the ranch house that used to be only mine, Adison sits on the edge of the bed looking more vulnerable than I've ever seen her.
"I'm terrified we don't actually know how to do this." Her voice is small. "How to be married and parents and navigate two worlds that don't naturally coexist."
I sit beside her, taking her hand. "We'll figure it out the same way we've figured out everything else."
"How's that?" She looks at me, and there's something desperate in her expression.
"Badly at first." I pull her closer. "Then better. Then well enough to survive whatever comes next."
"That's not very reassuring." But she's smiling.
"It's honest." I kiss her forehead. "That's all I've got."
She curls into me, her hand resting on her belly where our son is growing, and we sit there in the darkness of the ranch house with our impossible future spreading out ahead of us. Terrifying and perfect in equal measure.