“Ducane, we don’t have rings. We don’t have witnesses. We don’t have sense.” She stepped back, and there it was. The fear.Not of marrying me, of him. She’d heard enough about my father to know what he was capable of, and now she’d seen it for herself. That pissed me off more than anything he said at that table. “You don’t mean this. I’m not gonna be the reason you spite your daddy. He already can’t stand me.”
“I’m not afraid of him.” I stepped right back into her space. “The only thing I’m scared of is not having you. There’s a courthouse three blocks from here, and forty minutes before it closes. Marry me.”
She stopped laughing. She searched my face for the joke, the catch, any sign I wasn’t dead serious. She didn’t find one. Then she grabbed my hand and took off down the sidewalk in her heels, fussing the whole way about how this was the dumbest thing we’d ever done, but her face said she’d never wanted anything more in her life.
She stopped at the gas station on the corner.
“We need rings.”
Ring pops. Cherry for her, green apple for me. The cashier rang us up and wished us luck.
The clerk at the courthouse told us we needed two witnesses. We didn’t have a soul in that city who could know. Not Airalynn. Not Carter. Not Fee. Nobody, not until we were ready, and we were years from ready.
“You sure about this?” Skye paced the courthouse steps, the candy ring in her fist. “You do understand how crazy this is, right?”
I held mine up. She rolled her eyes. “Stop stalling.”
“Sugar Cane, I’m serious. This is serious. Are we serious?”
“Spot, the only people confused about this are them muthafuckas back at that restaurant. I’m not confused about a damn thing.”
She looked at me, chewing on her lip. “Okay. Give me ten minutes. I’ll get us some witnesses.”
She rushed off,and I let her go, because Skye could charm the devil off his own pitchfork. I had no worries. Ten minutes later, she came back with an old couple on her arms. The woman was already crying and smiling. The man told us he’d married his wife just like this fifty-one years back. No money, no people, just nerve.
I had that shit in droves right now.
We stood in front of a tired judge with candy on our fingers. I held both her hands.
“I don’t have anything yet,” I told her. “Nothing that’s really mine, but I’m going to build the life you deserve brick by brick. All of it’s yours before it even exists. Hear me. I’m not letting anybody take you from me. Not my father, not his money, not the whole world if it lines up against us. I told you I’ll watch it all burn first.”
She was crying and fighting it, giggling through it while she squeezed my hands.
“I’m holding you to that.” Her voice was barely there. “Every word, Ducane.”
And then she married me. Skye Valentina Campbell married me in a stolen minute. It was the realest thing I’d ever done.
We didn’t tell a soul. Couldn’t. So we hid it like contraband. The license in a folder tucked under my mattress. A whole marriage that belonged to nobody but us. We’d step into the open when it was safe. That was the plan.
We spent the month after loving each other like the end didn’t exist.
That’s the part that gets me, even now, with a real ring finally on her finger. I’d stood on those steps and called my father out by name as the thing that might come for us. I swore I’d burn the world before I let him win. And I believed it. More than that, I believed we’d burn it together. Back-to-back, however it came.
I had shit wrong. Not him. I always knew he’d come. I just never thought I’d be the one to bitch up. I never thought that when it came down to it, I’d let her walk and tell myself I was respecting her wishes. I didn’t lose Skye to my father. I lost her to my own fears.
I held her tighter on that deck, her face in my neck, and made myself a promise with a lot less noise than the first one.
Whatever she was holding back, whatever was coming when we got home, I’d handle it. We’d handle it. I was not the same Ducane who let her go once. This Ducane would be in the ground before he did it twice.
The club was exactlywhat Infinity Island at night should be. Dark, smoked out, and lively. The music could be heard from the street, and the line wrapped around the corner. I knew Skye would eventually want to come out, so I reserved a booth at the club for the time we were on the island.
We got to the table a little after eleven. The booth was in the back corner with a clear line to the floor. I needed to be able to see all the exits.
“Get us some drinks, bae. I’m going to dance.”
Skye didn’t even sit first. She handed me her clutch, looked at the floor, and went running.
I ordered a drink, lit the cigar Myheir had sent me off with, and settled in.
