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Hope’s head swings away from the crashing waves back to me. “What? For real?” Tears immediately crest in her eyes, and then she runs the few feet forwards and throws her arms around me.
Only for a quick squeeze and then she turns to Milo and hugs him. Then she reaches for Janus and pulls him in while she’s hugging Milo. I come close too, until we’re three bodies surrounding her. Encasing her.
“You’ll always have everything you want,” I breathe into her sweet-scented hair from behind. “From now on, it’s our job to make your every dream come true.”
She spins in our arms and lifts up on her toes to kiss me.
But I pull back with a smirk. “Ah ah ah, that part comes later. I haven’t said you may kiss the groom yet.”
She laughs with delight and goes back down on her heels in the soft sand.
And then we form a small circle.
“We’ve all written vows,” I explain.
Happy tears flow down Hope’s cheeks as Janus pulls out a precisely folded piece of paper from his pants pocket. The rest of us hold hands as he speaks.
“My Hope,” Janus begins. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, inside and out. I knew the moment I met you how special you are. You shine like a star among every other person in every room you ever entered.”
He looks up from the paper and into her eyes as he says the rest. “I had to have you in our lives. I feel like the luckiest fool in the world that you ever came to love us. I vow to cherish you, give you all the spankings you ever desire,”—this elicits a little giggle from Hope—“to give you anything you ever want or need, and to love you to the depths of my bones and soul for my whole life.”
Hope beams back at him and mouths, thank you. I love you.
Then Milo pulls a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. He stares at it, a deep furrow in his brow as he reads: “Hope, before you came our lives were cold. We were outside in winter and didn’t know how to come in from the cold. We dreamed of a home and lounging at rest beside a fire, but we didn’t know how. We made sad attempts at home and family, but we were bumbling fools who had no center. You are our center. You are our home. We will love you forever and ever.”
Tears flow down Hope’s cheeks at this and she squeezes Milo’s hand. Only at the end does he look up into her eyes, and I can see on his face how much he loves her. His words were perfect. And I love this moment, all of us finally expressing in our own way what she means to us and making our vows of forever to her.
Now it’s my turn. “Honestly, my Hope, I didn’t think a person like you could exist.” I have to clear my throat, more choked with emotion than I expected. But then again, Hope always makes me feel the unexpected.
“Everything in my life before I met you had taught me someone like you was impossible. Kind, giving, loving, and beautiful? I couldn’t trust it for so long because you just seemed too good to be true. You loved first and thought about yourself second. You gave second chances. And third.” I shake my head, still so in awe of her ability to love. I’m a merciless man, whereas she’s so full of mercy.
“So now I vow that it is my job, our job to think of you first and care for all your needs and desires. I’m sure we will fail, and I can only hope in your kind way, you will continue to teach us the way of love that’s been foreign to us our whole lives. You are truly the best of us. I vow to love, protect, honor, cherish, and worship at your feet all the days of my life, and into eternity beyond.”
Hope’s crying even harder, and Janus thankfully produces some tissues. Of course he knew how this would go. Milo’s crying as well. I keep swallowing hard, to hold my own emotions at bay.
“You didn’t give me any time to prepare. I don’t have anything ready,” she finally gulps.
“Just say whatever you feel,” Janus says. “That will be perfect.”
As the sun sets behind her in a blaze of neon oranges, pinks, and purples, Hope speaks from her heart. “This is nothing like the life I envisioned for myself. When I ran away from my parents’ cold, loveless house, I just wanted to escape. I had so much love to give but I didn’t know— I was terrified of men, frankly. I thought they’d all be like my father.”
She swipes away the tears from her cheeks as she looks back and forth amongst us all. “So I gave my love to those whom it was safe to give it to. Young girls in the industry I wanted to protect, who needed love just like I had growing up. I could try to protect them, anyway, and shower them with my love. But eventually they grew up, and so did I.”
