Celestra Forever After (21 page)

“You sure you want to do this?” His dimples dig in, and I have a mini-orgasm just watching him hold back a smile. My entire body is enlivened by his touch. My skin vibrates with a song of its own with each soft caress.

“I’m positive. Are you sure?” I squeeze his hand because there is only one right answer. “Really, it was more of a rhetorical question—a nervous boomerang that I threw out. Honest to God, we’re getting married if it’s the last thing we do today.” The sun breaks through for a nanosecond and illuminates Gage like a work of art—the work of a master—and I have to catch my breath. It’s hard to believe that Dr. O and Emma made this spectacular being. Gage is a specimen that deserves exaltation. One I plan to get on my knees and worship with a special brand of intimacy night after night. “Gage Oliver, I can’t believe you are all mine.” I shake my head. “How the hell did I get so lucky?” I mean every single word.

“I’m the lucky one around here. And I’d like to think it was fate. We were meant to be.” He bumps his lips over mine. “I’m not sure how or why, but I feel it in my bones, Skyla. Destiny put you in my heart a long time ago, and today everything falls into place.” That familiar look of agony washes over his features. It’s the same hurt expression he would get when he wasn’t sure where we stood, back when Logan and Marshall were constantly thrusting their swords in my direction. But all that has changed forever. As soon as we get back to Paragon, I’m going to see Ezrina about saving Gage from an untimely demise. I hate to break it to the Grim Reaper, but this is one party he’s not invited to. The problem with death is most people believe it’s truly a fatal condition, but now that my spiritual eyes have been opened, I can see for a fact it’s a temporary menace that splices your heart in two and hides the other half behind the holy veil until the inevitable reunion. It still hurts like hell to go through, even if you know you win in the end. But I’m not looking for any more pain. I’ve met my quota. I’m ready to twist the arm of fate until I get my way. It’s going to be Gage and me in the end.

“We were meant to be.” I hop up on my tiptoes and press my lips hard against his. I want to feel him. Impress this moment into my heart with all the tactile stimuli I can afford. All this pent up sexual frustration that Gage and I have been hauling around like an overstuffed piñata is finally going to burst this afternoon, and we’ll get to savor every last bite, melting in each other’s mouths like cotton candy. I pull him by the hand all the way down to the boxy building that reads
Host County Courthouse
just as a lady in a business suit twists the sign in the window.

“Closed.” Gage lets out a groan.

“No, no,
no!
” I head over and jam my shoe in the door just as she’s about to shut it.

“Sorry, we close at twelve.” She sings from inside, pushing my foot back out.

“It’s twelve o’ one,” Gage says it in the sweet, charming way that only he can. Gage can be a master manipulator by default. It’s simply a side effect of being so damn handsome. “Is there any way you could squeeze in one more wedding?”

She compresses a smile while glancing back at the elongated chocolate doors that lead to the courtroom. Gage and I seize the opportunity and step inside.

“The judge has already officiated two ceremonies.” She sighs, pushing her oversized dark-frames up the ridge of her nose. She’s a petite woman, features like a bird, hair like orange feathers. “Lord knows that man gets cranky if there’s too much love in the afternoon.” She gives a bleak smile as if she knew this on an intimate level, and I refrain from letting out an audible groan. “Come back Monday. We’re open nine to five.” She squints past us, disapprovingly. “Bring some family. That’ll be your biggest regret.” She strides over to the desk.

“Look—I’ve got access to the best donuts on Paragon,” I start in a panic. “I’ll give you a year’s supply.” Nev and Ezrina are going to kill me if she says yes. And really—deep fried carbohydrates are the only negotiation tool I could come up with?

“Donuts, huh?” She considers this a moment. “They make me break out like a teenager—no thanks.” She pauses from her all-important task of shuffling paperwork with the expectation of a fresh bribe.

Gage pulls out his wallet. “I’ve got a one hundred dollar gift certificate to the Cheesecake Factory, and….” He pulls out a Paragon Bowling Alley business card with his name on it. “A yearlong pass—two games a night. Knock yourself out.” He flashes those killer dimples and seals the deal. “Bet that won’t make you break out.”

“No, it won’t.” She snatches both from his hand. “Let me see what I can do.” She clip-clops away in her three-inch stacked heels while I wrap my arms back around the man I’m about to marry. I look up at his handsome features, his dark stubble peppering his face, sexy as hell.

“It’s finally here, Gage. That vision you shared with me, the first summer I arrived, is about to come true.”

He presses his forehead to mine. “Let’s forget all about that vision for now. I want us to experience this firsthand—to really live this moment.”

“I like how you think.” My tongue tracks up his cheek to his ear. “And I like how you taste.”

Gage and I are living our future right here in this courthouse, and everything about it makes me feel as if my body has filled with helium. I’m giddy, punch drunk, ready to stagger like a fool and break out in laughter that never ceases. This budding elation is what I have to look forward to each and every day with Gage by my side.

The clip clopping of heels return in reverse, and we look over.

Her lenses flash in the light as if she were taking our picture. “The judge will see you now.”

My heart thumps. It jumps right into my throat, into my ears as my body echoes in one large heartbeat that filters right down to my fingertips.

“Follow me.” She spins on her heels and walks briskly toward the overgrown chocolate doors.

It’s strange, moments like these. The gravity of the situation presses down over my flesh as my entire body goes numb. The building could crumble over me, and I wouldn’t feel a thing. I float beside Gage unaware of how we travel so fast, already in the judge’s chambers with the dank smell of old DUIs, possession charges, and, of course, the occasional, less traditional bride and groom.

An explosion of warmth and light takes over my body, from the inside out, and I’m overcome with emotion. What’s about to happen next is the very thing I want most. And, in typical fashion, my heart fractures just a little because the cruel world is pushing Logan and our love out of focus while ushering in Gage under the white-hot spotlight brimming with desire. My heart beats erratic. My breathing picks up as if I just swam over from Paragon. I might be having a genuine cardiac episode, and, if I am, I fully choose to ignore it. I want this, and there’s not a single malfunction my body can do to stop it from happening.

Gage offers to fill out the paperwork and breezes through it in minutes.

He smiles down at me, one of those big toothy smiles he saves for only the best occasions—it almost looks foreign with all the strife we’ve had lately.

“Here we are,” it comes from me breathy, scared as hell, but I’m as happy as I’ve ever been, right down to my marrow. My mind races with all kinds of crazy thoughts as my mother,
Logan
, my sisters, even Tad spin like a windmill through my brain.

Oh my, God—I’m going to fuck Gage.

A pang of icy heat flashes through me because one, it’s so not ladylike to think like this just a few minutes before something so sacred, so
life
altering is about to occur—and two, from now on whenever I reflect on this special day I’ll remember that very vulgarity, and, knowing me, I’ll give a reflective smile. I can’t help it though, we’ve been chaste as chaste can be, well, not like those insane couples who don’t kiss until they say
I do
, but like normal people who have rampant hormones that only their celestial mother’s have the ability to squelch. Gage and I are going to become one in the most literal sense, and every cell from my scalp to my toes is rioting with elation.

“Skyla”—Gage jiggles my hand—“he asked to state your name.”

“Oh.” I straighten, looking up at the judge as the vision Gage had, the one he allowed me to experience through telepathy, plays out in real time. This is it, our courthouse. The judge sits high up on his walnut throne in his dark robe, his hair as clear as floss. “Skyla Messenger.”

“Will you be keeping your name?”

A breath gets caught in my throat. I had thought about it. Hell, I’m pretty sure I told my father I would drag it to the grave, and then eternity after that…but Skyla Laurel Messenger Oliver is quite a mouthful. And now I feel like an ass for even suggesting to my father I’d hang onto it—sensible as holding an anchor.

I look to the gorgeous god beside me who I’ve somehow tricked into wanting only me. “No, I’ll be changing it.” My heart pinches with grief as I say those words.

“Skyla”—Gage leans in close, the thick scent of his cologne ignites an inferno in me without even trying—“it’s okay if you want to keep it. I promise I don’t mind.”

“I want to be Mrs. Gage Oliver.” My lips tingle as I say it, and my stomach clenches with grief because, for the smallest window of time, I was Mrs. Logan Oliver. Not that there’s any state record, but there’s a heavenly record, and, at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters. “This is about you and me.” I push the words out like pushing a body off the side of Devil’s Peak—the body, of course, being my short marriage to Logan. Even if death had already nailed that coffin shut, I still hold him in my heart as my husband. Then my mother’s words come back to me—
there’s room in your heart to love more than one person
, and, she’s right, it’s a beautiful thing.

I swallow hard as I turn to the judge. “Skyla Oliver is what I want.”

“Very well.” He makes a note of it and proceeds while the petite woman who let us in acts as our witness. “We are gathered here for the wedding of Skyla Messenger and Gage Oliver.” He presses into me with that same familiar smirk I’ve seen on the back of the one hundred dollar bill—Benjamin Franklin’s own brand of righteous judgment mixed with disappointment. My father never showed so much as an ounce of disappointment in me, so there’s that. “Are you, Skyla, here under your own free will?”

“Yes.” I spastically nod into both him and Gage. “
God
, yes,” I give a nervous laugh. “I mean this isn’t a hostage situation if that’s what you’re getting at.” Crap, did I just say that out loud? “I totally trust Gage. He’s my best friend. It’s not like I just met him at some frat party. We’ve known each other for about two years now. He’s my soul mate. He’s had these really vivid dreams about me for a very long time.” I touch my fingers to my lips in an effort to stop the verbal diarrhea. God. “I mean, they’re not erotic or anything.”

The judge holds his palm to me, and I swallow down the rest of the uncalled for babble ready to spew from my lips.

Great. Bring up hostage situations and wet dreams. What’s next? Clown Fems?

“And you, Gage?” He threads his pen through his fingers as if he were bored. “Free will? Or should I place a call to the hostage negotiation team?”

Nice. I scowl at him for a moment. It looks like the only clown around here is seated right in front of us. At least there’s not a Fem for miles.

“There’s no place I’d rather be.” Gage gives my hand a squeeze.
I mean it.

“Ms. Messenger—” The judge drawls it out with a slight country twang, and I sop it up to the dregs. There it was, the very last time I will ever hear anyone call me by that name, well, outside of Marshall, and legally speaking. It’s as if I’m inching toward a very steep cliff and the time has come for me to gracefully swan dive into a whole new world. It’s coming—the plunge—the moment I’m torn from my father forever, and I feel anything but graceful about it. Mia changed her name a while back, and my mother did the day she married Tad. It was just me who was left carrying the banner of my father’s love, and now, I’m surrendering it to the wind, to blow around futile and crash to the ground—turning to dust like my father himself. Demetri may have killed him, but I’m the one ending any hope of a Messenger lineage.

“Do you, Skyla, take Gage to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

My chest blooms with heat. An entire firework factory goes off inside me, singeing me, making me want to scream with joy and the slight surprise of sadness.

This is it—goodbye Skyla Messenger, forever. But it’s a beautiful hello, one I wouldn’t trade for a thousand letters that hold the memory of the past. Gage Oliver is my future, and that’s the only place I want to be.

I take a hold of his hands and get lost in the deep ocean of his eyes. “Yes—I do.”

“Do you, Gage, take Skyla to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do.” His eyes widen into mine. A smile brims on his lips.

The judge glances around the empty courtroom. “Is there anyone here who objects to these two getting married?”

The windows rattle as the rain increases with intensity. Lightning goes off, dripping from the sky like frayed tendrils, and in that instant the reflection of a man fills in the watery windowpane. He disappears as quick as he came, but I know that face, those hauntingly familiar eyes, and my heart claps to a stop. It was my father. His eyes were wide, his face pale with shock.

I shake the image away. Clearly, I was experiencing a momentary delusion. My dad
loves
Gage. He would’ve given me away if he could have—just the way he did the first time with Logan. He was all smiles and watery eyes that night at the Falls of Virtue, and so was I. In fact, he’s probably smiling down on me right now.

I turn my attention back to the judge, but my father’s shocked expression resonates in my mind like a bell long after it rang.

“Don’t worry, kids”—the judge frowns in his boredom—“the weather objects to everything around here.”

We share a quiet laugh.

“I’d like for you each to say a brief vow to one another—a promise if you will.” He checks his watch. “Try to boil it down to a few nouns and verbs. Think hashtag.”