Her face crumples. Tears spill over and stream down her cheeks. She doesn't bother wiping them away.
"Len," I clear my throat, try again. "I've loved you since I was seven years old."
She lets out a sound that's half laugh, half sob, and I have to pause to collect myself because if I don't, I'm going to lose it completely.
"I've loved you through nine summers that felt infinite and seven years of distance that felt impossible. I've loved you through silence, through nights when I wasn't sure if I'd ever make it through. I've loved you in the quiet ways I knew how all while hoping that someday, somehow, you'd find me again.”
I fold the paper back up because the rest of what I wrote doesn't matter now. It's just words on a page, and she deserves more than that.
She deserves the truth spoken out loud, unpolished and imperfect and completely real.
"And now you're here," I continue, and my voice steadies slightly because this part is easy. This part is just fact. "And I get to love you out loud. I get to love you in all the ways I couldn't before—in the everyday moments and the hard moments and the boring moments that make up an actual life together."
She's crying openly now, and so is half the crowd, but I keep going.
"I get to love you when you're stealing all the covers at three in the morning. When you're crying over fictional characters who aren't real but in your mind they are. When you're so deep in your writing that you forget I exist and I have to literally put food in front of you to make sure you eat something."
She laughs through her tears, and the sound makes my heart feel too big for my chest.
"I promise to always tell you the truth, even when it's scary. Even when I'm afraid it might be the thing that pushes you away. I promise to let you make your own choices, even when every instinct I have wants to protect you from everything that could possibly hurt you. I promise to keep building—houses and futures and memories—with you.”
I take both her hands now, hold them tight enough that she can feel how much I mean this.
"You're my home, Lenora Wells. You always have been, even when I didn't have you. Even when I thought I'd lost you. And I promise to spend every day of the rest of my life making sure you know it. Making sure you never doubt it. Making sure you always feel loved exactly as you are, not as some version of yourself you think you need to be."
I pause, take a breath, finish it.
"I choose you, Len. Today and every day after. In every timeline. In every version of this story. For as long as you'll have me."
The officiant is crying now too, so is pretty much everyone else.
Nora takes a shaky breath, doesn't reach for notes because she never wrote any. She just speaks from the heart the way she always has when it matters.
"I always knew fate existed. I saw it in other people’s stories—in the way two souls seemed to find each other, even against the odds. But for the longest time, it felt like something I was meant to witness, not live. Until you.”
She squeezes my hands hard enough that I feel it in my bones.
"From that moment you made the ordinary feel extraordinary. You became my calm in the chaos, my laughter in the silence, and the safest place I’ve ever known. With you, love isn’t something I chase —it’s something that feels like home.”
Her voice breaks, but she pushes through.
“I promise to love you without condition, to stand with you in the light and in the dark, to celebrate your victories, and to hold you steady through the moments that feel uncertain. I vow to seeyou, truly see you — not just who you are now, but every version of the man you’ll become.”
She's smiling now, through the tears, and she's so beautiful it hurts to look at her.
“I’ll laugh at your jokes, even the ones that don’t land, steal your fries, your hoodies, and maybe a few of your dreams, because I plan on building new ones with you. I’ll be your loudest cheerleader and your softest place to land, your adventure partner, and your quiet at the end of the day."
"So Nate, if the difference between the love of your life and your soulmate is that one's a choice and one is not, then I choose you every single day. Even on the days when it's hard. Especially on the days when it's hard. I promise to let you love me out loud and to love you just as loudly back. I promise to fill our library with more books and our house with more noise and our garden with more sunflowers and our life with all the messy, beautiful, imperfect moments that make forever worth having."
She takes a breath, steadies herself.
"You're my home too, Nate. You always have been."
The officiant barely gets through the "I do's" before I'm kissing her, and everyone's laughing and crying and applauding, and the string quartet is playing again, and the sun is setting over the Mediterranean in streaks of orange and gold that look like they were painted specifically for this moment.
And Nora is my wife.
My wife.
