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“Not for long, Tanner.” He smiled, hooking an arm around his brother. “Our children’ll be sleepin’ here someday.”
“Imagine that.”
He could.
“C’mon.” Kellan pulled him up. “Let’s get hitched.”
As the grooms, it was their duty to welcome each guest as they arrived. God, how he usually hated that frivolous shit, but for some reason it hadn’t been as loathsome as Kellan thought it was going to be. With most of the townsfolk here, he, Tanner, and their father stood off to the side, anticipating the start of the ceremony.
Grams and Aunt Kim, holding three-month-old Benjamin, joined them. His baby brother smiled at him with his big blue eyes and his heart melted. He was doing that all the time now.
His aunt put the baby in his arms and he kissed his pudgy cheek. “How’s my little butterball?”
“That’s a horrible nickname. Benjie ain’t no turkey, Kel.” Chuckling, Tanner rubbed the dark curls on his head.
Matthew took the baby from him. “You’re Daddy’s big boy, ain’t ya?” Holding his son to his chest, he rocked and swayed.
In a cloud of lilac, Emily appeared, skip-dancing across the grass toward them. Grabbing her by the hand, Kellan twirled her around. “Ain’t you a sight. Tryin’ to put poor Billy six feet under?”
“Just you wait.” Giggling, she kissed his cheek. “Your bride looks so beautiful. Happy weddin’ day.” Turning to Tanner, she wound her arms around his middle. “Love you, Cuzzy. Y’all might want to get movin’, ’cause she’s ready.”
Kellan, Tanner, and Matthew waited for Arien at the perimeter of the stone triangle. The assembly gasped, whispering amongst themselves, when it was his cousin in her pale-purple dress who preceded her. It should have been Jennifer.
He saw her then. And the air left his lungs. Surrounded by a halo of dazzling light, Arien looked so beautiful with the setting sun shining down upon her. Ivory and champagne, the flowy, voluminous layers of her sheer skirts shimmered. And the bodice…Oh, Miss Lilly, you’ve outdone yourself—she’s perfect…was exquisite. A plunging, deep V-neckline of next-to-nothing tulle, embellished with embroidered appliqués of vine and feather lace.
How had they been so favored?
Kellan glanced to his father. Matthew squeezed his hand, as surely as he was Tanner’s on the other side of him.
She began walking toward them, alone. And his heart ached.
Forbidden to come any closer to the stones, Emily kissed her cheek, and keeping Arien’s flowers for her, took a seat with Grams, her mother, and Benjamin in the front row. With no one to offer her to them, Dad stepped forward, and taking her hands in his, he tied a ribbon around her wrist and whispered in her ear.
Kellan couldn’t hear what he said, but whatever it was made her cry.
Then her hands joined theirs. He on her right. Tanner on the left.
The trinity ceremony, while sacred and symbolic to them, was actually very simple. No judge. No priest or officiant. It was the intent in their own hearts that married he and Tanner to her and she to them. Not a prayer recited by some stranger in a cassock or decreed by a stamp on a meaningless piece of paper. The three of them would forge their own covenant in blood and seal it with fire.
Together, the three of them stepped inside the triangle of stones and extended their joined hands.
Matthew tipped his chin and Kellan opened his left palm, the blade slicing quick and deep into his skin. Before Arien could utter a sound, her bleeding flesh was bound together with his. She cried out with the second cut. Tanner didn’t so much as flinch.
“Omne trium perfectum.” Everything that comes in threes is perfect.
Bound to his brother and his wife, Kellan led them to the woodpile in the center of the stones. His father unwound the bloodied bindings, tossing them on top. As an old Shoshone poem was read aloud from the sidelines, Tanner stacked a second diamond band, slightly different from the one he’d given her, on Arien’s finger. She gave a ring to each of them. Then the fire was lit and it was done.
Flames shooting up into the darkening sky behind them, he and his brother kissed their wife.
“That’s it?” Her smile was radiant. “We’re married?”
“Forever and ever, baby cakes.”
“You’ve got yourself two husbands now, pretty girl.”
Looping her arms through theirs, she giggled. “Gosh, I’m a greedy one, aren’t I?”
With this being one of the last weddings of the season, the party would go on well into the wee hours of the morning. Not for them, though. Now that everyone had eaten, the cake had been cut, and they were on their way to being pleasantly soused, Kellan and Tanner could make a getaway plan to take Arien to a private party for three upstairs.
