Page 100 of Hushed

“De ce jour,” I prompt him softly.

“De ce jour vers l’avant,” he says. I nod at him. He gives me a watery, grateful smile, and he looks so nervous. “Pour le meilleur ou pour le pire, pour la prospérité et la pauvreté, dans la maladie et dans la santé.” He smiles in triumph, and I can tell that he’s gotten over the hard part, and I can just picture him sitting there, practicing those words over and over again so that he can say them out loud. My heart breaks open for this wonderful, brave man. “Pour aimer et chérir; jusqu’à ce que la mort nous sépare.”

Until death parts us.

And for once, I don’t care that there’s an entire church watching us, and I’m not doing things according to the rules. I grab him by both lapels and drag him to me, kissing him deeply. He threads his arms around me, and I hear in the background the laughter and applause of the congregation, and even that doesn’t embarrass me.

“I’m supposed to tell you when to do that,” the minister says, and I take one hand and wave him off.

Our kiss ends and for a second, our faces are still together. “You are everything that is good and right,” I whisper to him. “And after we get home, I want you to fuck me blind.”

He reddens and laughs and I race through my vows, because all of a sudden I don’t care that they’re in somebody else’s language. My vows are to Levi, and I will uphold them with every fiber of my being.

Chapter thirty-four

Levi

“You didn’t have to do this,” Bastien says, standing up from one of the chairs in the lobby where I’d left him when I went to collect our keys from the front desk at the Capital Hilton. “We can’t really afford this if I’m not working.”

“It’s our honeymoon night,” I answer. “And this place happens to be special to me.”

He hugs himself. We’ve changed out of our wedding clothes into jeans and comfortable shoes, but I can see that he’s thinking he’s not nearly dressed up enough for this place.

“Please don’t tell me you got the honeymoon suite,” he whispers.

“Better.”

“That sounds expensive.”

I smile at him and hand him the key cards. He looks down at them and frowns. “Is this the same room?”

“It kinda meant a lot to us.”

The look he gives me melts my soul a little bit. He reddens when I take his hand and pull him across the lobby toward the elevators. He crowds behind me to avoid the bellhop. My cheeks ache from grinning.

I let us into our room and he goes in and looks at the bed. He sits on it and looks at the window, and then at me.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask.

“That first morning, when you were lying here and I was thinking about how I wanted to hold onto you. And now I can. Because…” He holds up his ring finger. “That happened.”

I sit on the bed. “I like these happenings.”

He lies down and puts his head on my leg. “Someday I’m going to give you a proper honeymoon,” he tells me.

“I don’t want a honeymoon. I didn’t even want the ceremony. I just wanted you.”

He looks away. “Tomorrow’s going to be a long day. I don’t know how long I’ll be at that meeting. God, what a time to have scheduled it. I’m barely out of my wedding clothes.”

I touch his hair. It feels like silk against my fingers. He closes his eyes. “Baby boy, we need to talk about something,” I say.

He opens his eyes. “That sounds alarming.” He smiles, but it looks tense.

I take a deep breath. “I finished reading Monday afternoon. I’d have had the whole thing worked out by Tuesday, but, ummm…” I hold out my left hand, where my wedding ring glistens in the light. “Well, you’re not the only one who got overwhelmed by happenings.”

Bastien sits up. “And?”

I pull the backpack I carried in with us over and unzip it carefully. Then I fish out a folder. I back up against the headboard and open it. Bastien looks over my shoulder.