Page 55 of Wrong Cabin, Right Mountain Man
I’m engaged to the love of my life, standing on the porch of a converted ranger station that I once broke into by accident, wearing a ring carved by hands that learned to build beautiful things because destruction was too painful to bear.
Wrong cabin. Wrong timing. Wrong everything.
And somehow, impossibly, perfectly right.
We getmarried six months later, in the clearing beside the ranger station where the summer wildflowers bloom.
It’s small—just Coralyn and Moira standing up with us, Elissa and a handful of friends from town filling the handmade benches Finn built for the occasion. The officiant is a retired judge Moira knows from the gallery, and the reception is a potluck because I insisted on cooking at least half of it myself.
Finn cries when he sees me walking toward him in my dress. I cry when I see him crying. Coralyn cries because she’s Coralyn, and even Moira wipes her eyes when she thinks no one is looking.
The vows are simple. We wrote them together, sitting on the couch in the ranger station, arguing over word choices until we collapsed into laughter.
“I promise to try,” Finn says, holding my hands in his. “Every day. Even when it’s hard. Even when I’m scared. I promise to choose you, choose us, for the rest of my life.”
“I promise to be too much,” I say back. “Too loud, too passionate, too everything. And I promise to keep choosing you—all of you, the broken parts and the healing parts and everything in between. Forever.”
When he kisses me, our friends cheer. The mountains echo it back, like even the wilderness is celebrating.
Later, after the food is eaten and the dancing is done and our guests have said their goodbyes, Finn and I stand on the porch of our home, watching the stars come out.
“Mrs. McGrath,” he says, testing the words.
“Mr. Campos-McGrath,” I counter. “We haven’t decided yet.”
“We have time.”
We do. We have all the time in the world.
I lean into my husband—myhusband—and smile at the universe that brought me to the wrong cabin and the right man.
“I love you,” I say, because I can now. Because the words come easily, finally, after a year of holding them back.
“I love you too.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head. “Even when you’re being too much.”
“Especially then?”
“Especially then.”
Sometimes the best things in life come from the worst wrong turns.
I should know.
I’m living proof.
