Page 122 of Main Event

She wears a simple white outfit that I couldn’t describe exactly if asked. My gaze isn’t on the dress but on her face. Her expression shows a firm resolve, moving confidently toward her future, which she does effortlessly—and yet, she still takes my breath away every time.

She’s looking at me.

Only at me.

Mack walks her in with the solemnity of a man who doesn’t use it lightly. His hand over hers on his arm, his chin up, his pace exactly right. A profound hush has fallen over the room; it’s the intentional quiet of an audience captivated by a significant moment, showing respect through their focused attention.

They reach the front.

Mack looks at me.

He gently frees Andi’s hand from his arm, holding it briefly—just a moment—and in his expression, there’s a look that shows he’s made his decision, even though he feels the cost of it. Then, he places her hand in mine.

He steps back.

He finds the chair beside my mother, sits down, and my mother immediately takes his hand without looking at him. He lets her, which tells me everything I need to know about what this day means to the people in this room.

I look at Andi.

She looks at me.

“Hi,” she says. Quietly. Just for us.

“Hi, baby,” I say.

Travis begins to play. Just his voice and his acoustic guitar, a song he wrote for us as a wedding gift. The verses are perfect—our bond through his eyes, effortless and exact. But it’s the chorus that wrecks me.

I will be there to hold you when you cry

I will be there to watch you when you fly

There’s nothing I can’t do with you by my side

I watch you walk the aisle as my bride

From this day forth, I call you… my wife

The vows are ours.

We wrote them separately, as Bill suggested, and it turned out to be exactly right—two people who say what they mean, saying what they mean without knowing what the other would say, and arriving at something that fits together anyway.

She goes first.

She talks about the center. About building a door because she knew what it needed to be. About understanding, eventually, that she hadn’t built it only for other people—that she needed the door too, and that he was what she found when she finally walked through it. She talks about the difference between being protected and being seen. About what it cost her to learn that difference and what it meant when someone taught it to her without realizing they were teaching it.

She looks at me the whole time she speaks.

I don’t take my eyes off her.

Then it’s my turn.

I’ve thought about this for weeks. I’m not a man who has always known the right words. Andi knows this, and everyone in this room knows it. It’s one of the things I’ve had to build alongside everything else. But I know what I want to say. I’ve known since the morning after the fight, when I woke up before she did, lay in the dark of the Vegas hotel room, and fully and without qualification understood what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

“I spent a long time thinking that protecting someone meant getting in front of them,” I say. “Between them and whatever was coming. Deciding what they could handle. Managing the distance so they wouldn’t have to feel the whole weight of it.” I hold her gaze. “I was wrong about that. You showed me I was wrong—not by telling me, but by being someone who didn’t need that version of protection. Who needed something different.” I pause. “Next to you. Not in front of you. That’s where I’m supposed to be. That’s where I’m going to be. For everything that comes—and things will come, we both know that—I will be next to you. Not managing it for you. Not carrying it instead of you. Next to you, while you carry what’s yours and I carry what’s mine, and we figure out the rest together.”

The room is very quiet.

Andi is gazing at me with that look she has when something has hit exactly where it was meant to, and she’s chosen to accept it.