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By the time we graduate from college, we’re inseparable. Somewhere along the way, our lives have woven themselves together so tightly I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. Like two different threads in the same tapestry, impossible to pull apart without unraveling the whole thing.

So when Damiano takes me back to our park on a hot summer night, I don’t think anything of it. We sit on the same bench beneath the oak tree where we shared our first dance and our first kiss, talking about absolutely nothing while the evening sun disappears behind the trees.

Then he gets up.

And kneels in front of me.

For once in my life, I don’t need time to think.

“Yes.”

The easiest answer I’ve ever given, because it really is that simple. He is mine and I am his.

We get married six months later in a small church we saw while driving around on his Vespa and fell in love with.

I cry walking down the aisle as my father fights his own tears.

Ugly tears.

The kind that ruin makeup.

Damiano’s eyes shine too as I approach him. He’s waiting for me in a dark blue suit and white shirt, and somehow seeing his crooked smile at the end of that aisle makes me cry even harder.

That smile is home.

Jude Hawthorne stands beside him as his best man.

I’ve seen Jude before, mostly through video calls with Damiano, but the wedding is the first time I meet him in person. He arrived the day before with his parents and his twin brother, Dex, and I immediately noticed how different he was from Damiano.

Jude is quiet and reserved, the kind of man who seems happier watching a room than being the centre of it, while Damiano has never met a room he didn’t want to fill with his voice.

Looking at them, I almost wonder how the hell they ever became best friends.

Then the wedding party starts.

I watch them laugh together, tease each other and fall into conversations that clearly started years before I ever knew either of them, and suddenly I understand why Damiano has always called Jude his brother.

And after meeting Lily and Josh, I understand why he calls the Hawthornes family.

The others wanted to come too, but life got in the way. Penny had just opened her photography studio, Ethan was recovering from being shot, Jace was on tour and Grace had school. I’ll meet them when we finally make it to Paradiso Ranch.

We’ve been talking about going together for years, but there’s always school, work or money getting in the way. The wedding and setting up our apartment haven’t exactly helped, and Wyoming will have to come before Italy because God knows when we’ll be able to afford that.

Jude’s speech at our wedding is short but warm. He even uses some of my favorite love quotes, and when I look at Damiano listening to him, I can see how much they mean to each other.

Damiano talks about Jude often, and I know they email each other every week. He goes back to Lander whenever he can, usually staying at Paradiso Ranch for a weekend while he catches up with Jude and deals with whatever needs fixing around the property. Somehow those weekends always seem to fall when I can’t get away from school or work, so I never manage to go with him.

The first two years that follow our marriage are ordinary.

Beautiful, fairytale, magical ordinary.

We work.

We save.

We dream.

We fight.