Jared touched my face once, and then the reverend spoke again. This time his voice blurred into the background as I watched the blues and grays of Jared’s eyes shine in ways I’d never seen them. His expression was relaxed and nervous; happy and concerned; every emotion he’d ever felt collided inside of him in a beautiful display of the barely noticeable shifts in the skin around his eyes and mouth. No one could have noticed it but me, and I read each one as he struggled with a lifetime of duty, and the relief of hearing me promise myself to him.

“Jared Ryel?” Father Julian said. “Are you ready to enter into this marriage with Nina Grey, believing the love you share and your faith in each other will endure all things?”

“I am,” Jared said simply.

“Nina Grey?”

“I am!”

Our small audience laughed at my haste. Jared chuckled as well.

Father Julian regrouped, and then finished his part. “Are you ready to enter into this marriage with Nina Grey, believing the love you share and your faith in each other will endure all things?”

I waited for the minister to correct his mixup, but he never did.

I nodded quickly. “To Jared Ryel. Yes. I’m ready.”

Father Julian didn’t skip a beat. “Nina, do you take Jared to be your wedded husband? Promise to love him, to honor and cherish him, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, and to be to him in all things a good and faithful wife as long as you both shall live?”

“Yes.”

Father Julian repeated Jared’s vows. The closer he came to the end, the tighter Jared’s fingers were around mine. Finally, when it came time for Jared to speak, he didn’t hesitate.

“Yes, and after that,” Jared said. “For a thousand years, and then a thousand more…I will love you.”

A smile stretched across my face. His hands were cupped around mine a bit too tight, and his body leaned into mine eagerly. This was the moment he had waited for, and he seemed to want to take it all in and rush it at the same time so nothing could keep him from it. That moment in time was the light switch in a dark room, the doorway at the end of a scary hallway. It was anything and everything that had ever saved anyone.