Page 739 of End Game

Dex notices immediately.

He takes my hand and murmurs, “Don't you fucking start.”

“You're already crying.”

“I'm allowed. I'm wearing white.”

Cami clears her throat loudly enough to get our attention.

When we face her, she looks down at the papers in her hand and takes a breath.

“I wrote something much longer than this.”

Dex smiles. “I'm shocked.”

“Quiet. I'm officiating.”

His grin widens.

Cami looks back down for a second, then abandons the paper almost entirely.

“But I realized nobody here needs me to explain Micah and Dex to them. And I definitely don't need to explain them to each other.”

Her mouth trembles before she gets it under control.

“So I'll just say this. Marriage doesn't make something real that wasn't real before. You two have already been choosing each other for a long time, mostly in ways that aren't very glamorous. Work schedules. Groceries. Campaign nights. Bad days. Making room for each other when neither of you was especially good at asking for it.”

She looks at Griffin for a breath.

Dex squeezes my hand.

“Today is just the day you get to stand in front of everyone who loves you and say you're going to keep choosing it.”

She looks at me.

“Micah, you're first.”

I turn toward Dex.

I rewrote my vows twice because the first version sounded too polished, like something I thought a person was supposed to say at a wedding rather than something I would actually say to him.

“You make it very difficult to be alone.”

Dex's eyebrows rise.

A laugh moves through the room.

I smile. “I mean that as a compliment.”

“Good recovery,” he says quietly.

“You fill space. You always have. Rooms. Conversations. Silence. For a long time, I thought I needed quiet to feel settled, and then you moved into my life, and I eventually realized quiet wasn't the same thing as peace.”

His fingers tighten around mine.

“I don't want less of you. I don't want you easier, quieter, or smaller. I want the person who leaves shoes in places shoes should never be. I want the music and the bad jokes. I want whatever version of you exists fifty years from now when your knees hurt, and you still refuse to admit you're old.”

Dex laughs, but tears have already gathered along his lower lashes.