They married on the terrace where Ezra had once staged a birthday dinner Lucien could no longer remember experiencing firsthand, the same string lights hung with considerably steadier hands this time, the whole space transformed simply and without excess into something that felt, to both of them, entirely and unmistakably theirs.

The guest list was small, deliberately so — Lucien's father, visibly moved in a way he'd rarely allowed himself to be in front of his son; Nathan, who had cried twice already before the ceremony even began and made no effort to hide it; Roan, standing at the back with the careful, watchful posture of a man who still...