“The rings!” Pop calls.
My mom gasps. Tucker leaps to his feet and points past the gazebo. Wyatt’s eyes leave mine, and they go comically wide. He starts to his feet too.
My dad’s jaw is flapping.
I turn to look, already smiling, because I know what’s coming, except—
“Goats?”
Monica shoots me a look and laughs like I’m crazy, but then her eyes, too, go round as a ship’s wheel.
Because there’s an army of goats cresting the hill and charging the gazebo.
The wedding guests are laughing.
So are the tourists.
But the locals who are in on all the wedding plans?
They’re not.
Grady looks at me and mouths, Goats?
I shrug, because I don’t know where they came from.
“The rings!” Monica says to Pop, who’s also staring in surprise at the herd.
“The rings,” he agrees.
Only Jason seems amused.
Confused, but also amused.
Pretty sure real pirates could invade his home and he’d just stand there watching. Unless they tried to take Monica as part of their booty.
Then I think things would get ugly.
Patrick hands Pop the rings.
A goat barrels into the gazebo from behind, darts across, and head-butts Pop’s knee.
“Oh, no, you didn’t, you little sucker!” Grady yells. “Charge! That powder monkey’s making away with our pirate captain!”
“Little fucker. Little fucker,” Long Beak Silver improvises from atop the gazebo.
“Dad—” Tucker says.
“I know. Don’t repeat it,” Wyatt tells him.
“The pirates—” Tucker says, pointing.
Sit, I mouth.
He narrows his eyes at me while two dozen locals dressed like pirates charge up the aisle and around the chairs toward the bride and groom, yelling and waving swords.
I grin back at him.
And then a goat rams my left leg, and I gasp and buckle.
“With this ring, I thee wed!” Monica yells.
“With this ring, I thee wed!” Jason yells back.
I know he’s supposed to unsheathe his sword and battle the pirates, but stars are dancing in my vision as a goat jumps on my knee and tries to lick my ears.
“I now pronounce you pirate and wife!” Pop yells.
“Back, you little fucker.” Wyatt sweeps the goat back, and then I’m up in his arms. My dad’s right behind us.
“Ellie. Hospital. Now,” my dad orders.
“It’s fine,” I say.
I want to watch the show.
And grip Wyatt a little tighter.
And, yes, probably pop a painkiller—the over-the-counter kind, because I’m sure the pain will recede soon—or maybe two.
“Dad, the goat’s licking me and the pirates are fighting,” Tucker laughs.
“The swords!” I gasp. “Wyatt, the guests need their swords!”
“I got ’em, Ellie,” Sloane calls.
And she does.
She’s handing out foam swords to all of Jason and Monica’s friends, who are leaping into the fray and battling the pirates who are trying to weave around the herd of goats to get to Monica.
“Back, you scurvy dogs!” Jason yells. “You’ll never take my bride! Piracy can’t stop true love! Only death can do that!”
“My hero,” Monica cries happily.
He scoops her over his shoulder as Sloane throws me a sword. “Behind you!”
She hasn’t given one to Patrick.
And he has four locals surrounding him.
“Babe, some help?” he says.
“Eat shit and die, you cheating asshole,” she replies.
Mr. and Mrs. Dixon gasp in horror.
And that’s before Grady’s younger cousins attack them with foam swords. “Plunder the booty!” one of them yells.
I bash foam swords with Tillie Jean, defending Wyatt while he tries to get us out of the mess of goats and pirates.
“Tucker! Careful!”
“I’ve got him, Wyatt,” Mom calls. “He’s a good pirate fighter. You get Ellie to safety!”
She bops Grady on the head with the butt of her foam sword, and he staggers dramatically, trips over a wooden folding chair, and faceplants in the ground.
“Oh my god!” I gasp.
“He’ll be fine,” Tillie Jean says while I continue to fight her behind Wyatt’s back. “The only person I know with a thicker skull than Grady is Cooper.”
My dad stabs Tillie Jean in the back with his foam sword, and she makes a dramatic pirate death too, yelling, “My brothers in pirate arms are coming for you, Captain Monica!” as she croaks out her fake last breaths.
“Good one, Dad!” I call.
“Safety,” he replies pointedly as he turns to help Mom defend Tucker against two more local pirates and the random goats.
Everyone’s laughing.
Wyatt’s dodging goats and tourists, not breaking a sweat, not even breathing hard as he carries me down behind Jason, who’s running with Monica tossed over his shoulder. They’re both laughing in glee, and I wonder if they’ll still go straight to The Grog for the reception, or if they’ll be fashionably late to their own party.
Probably late.
I take advantage of the fact that Wyatt’s supposed to be my boyfriend to bury my face in his neck.
It’s pretend, universe. Don’t strike us with lightning, I plead.
Fuck, he smells good.
“Thank you for being my hero,” I whisper against his hot skin.
“Thank you for letting me.” His voice is thick, and he knows.
He feels it too.
The inevitable.
Destiny.
The reason he moved in on our street when we were little.
The reason we’ve always irritated each other.
The reason he was just out of reach when I finally noticed him.
Because it’s been building up to this moment.
This exact moment here.
When he can be my hero.
And I can finally let him.
“Ellie?” he says thickly.
“Mm?”
“I don’t want to let you go.”
My heart swells three sizes and glows, radiating every ounce of affection I’ve ever denied having for this stubborn, strong, dependable man. “Your arms will eventually fall off,” I whisper. “But you’ll still be my hero even if they do.”
“I’m going to miss you.”
While Jason hustles Monica toward the Shipwreck Inn, Wyatt turns us down a side street and into a small public garden. He yanks on the wrought iron gate, and it shuts us inside with a clink.
“Are you kidnapping me?” I ask breathlessly.
“I’m seizing the moment.”
The Shipwreck Gardens are small—it’s more like garden, singular, surrounded with an ivy-covered wall, a fountain featuring a statue of Thorny Rock and his pirate treasure chest standing proudly in the center.
Wyatt sets me gently on a bench with my back to the shops on Blackbeard Avenue, so I can see the roofs of the town’s cozy houses beyond, and the gently sloped, blue haze-covered mountain peaks around us, and he squats on one knee in front of me.
My eyes bulge.
At least, until he ducks his head and laughs. “God, Ellie, it’s so easy.”
“You—you—” I sputter, but then I’m laughing with him.
Laughing and cradling his head as he laughs right there in my lap, over the crazy colonist dress I wore for Monica because I would’ve gone to her wedding dressed as a half-naked mermaid if she’d asked me to.
“How’s your leg?” Wyatt asks as we both regain control.
“Oh, it aches like a mother,” I reply cheerfully.
“Overdid it?”
“Times ten.”
He rubs his hand softly over my thigh through the fabric. “What do you need?”
“Warm bath, Motrin, and rum.” My fingers rest on his shoulders, just enough contact to make me feel grounded. “And maybe more of that.”
“This?” He tests the pressure on my muscle, and I sigh and nod.
“Is it supposed to still ache?”
“Muscle and nerve damage on top of newly healed bone. Eventually it’ll probably only be bad with weather changes, but apparently broken hips and femurs like to take their sweet time to heal.”
“No crutches?”
“I graduated crutches early, thank you.”
His lips twitch while he watches me with those intense gray eyes. “You’re a fighter.”
“I’m tired of fighting,” I whisper.
His gaze searches mine like he’s asking if I’m tired of fighting the pain, or tired of fighting him. “That’s just because you know you’ll never have a cooler wedding,” he whispers back.
My jaw drops a split second before the laughter overtakes me. “You are such a—such a—” I gasp out, searching for the right name to call him.
“Stud,” he supplies with an eyebrow wiggle, and it’s so un-Wyatt-like that I double over in laughter.
Except doubling over puts my face right next to his, and he’s smiling, his eyes alive and happy and twinkling with utter mischief, and this is everything.
He’s everything.
Everything I never knew I wanted, wrapped up in one Wyatt-shaped package.
I don’t know who starts the kiss, but once his lips are on mine, I know I won’t be the one to break it. He’s still massaging my leg while he loops his free hand behind my neck. I cling to his polo shirt, and almost laugh into the kiss thinking how crazy the two of us must look.
Him dressed like he’s a tourist from this century, me decked out like some kind of island colonist from the 1700s, a baby goat bleating beside us…
It’s the goat that breaks us apart.
Mostly because I can’t laugh and kiss him at the same time.
I need more practice.
More time.
“Ellie?” he says softly through a chuckle.
“Hmm?”