Page 113 of Mountain Man’s Mystic Touch

Rocco turns me until we face each other, my knees settling on either side of his hips. Our clothing and the approaching ceremony keep the position innocent. The way his eyes darken doesn’t.

“Look at me,” he says.

“I am.”

“Not at everything around me.”

I allow the awareness of the venue to recede. Guests moving along the paths. Ava worrying about the cake. Chloe reviewing her schedule. Jack pretending not to check the sky even though no rain is forecast.

Rocco remains.

We breathe together. Slowly at first, then in a shared rhythm that requires no counting. His palm rests over my heart while I place mine over his. Beneath my hand, his pulse is steady. Mine gradually matches it.

“There you are,” he says.

The words carry me back to the first time I touched him with the intention to help. He distrusted what he couldn’t see, yet somehow allowed me near the places he guarded most carefully. Now he is the person who brings me back to myself.

I kiss him once, softly enough not to disturb anything Ava and Chloe spent the morning arranging.

Rocco deepens the kiss anyway. His hand slides into my hair, stopping when he encounters the crown. “This is structurally unsound.”

I laugh against his mouth. “It survived Harper, Ava, Chloe, and me. It can survive you.”

“I’m the greater threat.”

“To the crown?”

His gaze lowers to my mouth. “Among other things.”

Heat curls through me, carrying a promise we cannot fulfill at this moment. No, not yet.

Rocco’s thumb brushes my cheek. His expression changes, becoming serious in the quiet way that reaches deeper than any dramatic declaration could.

“You’re certain?” he asks.

He isn’t asking whether I want the wedding. He knows I do. Rocco is asking whether I’m grounded, whether the decision belongs entirely to me, and whether the woman who sometimes knows things beyond explanation still chooses him without needing fate to make the choice for her.

“Yes.”

“Because you saw it?”

“No.” I touch his face. “I didn’t need to.”

Something powerful moves through his eyes. He kisses the center of my palm, then helps me stand.

Our ceremony takes place beneath a timber arbor draped in ivory fabric and greenery. Bronze lanterns line the aisle, surrounded by pumpkins, apples, and flowers in shades of burgundy and burnt orange. The mountains rise behind Rocco, dark and permanent beneath the autumn sky.

I walk toward him alone. Not because I have no one to give me away, but because I belong wholly to myself.

Rocco waits at the end of the aisle with the look of a man who understands the difference.

Chloe stands beside Jack in the front row. Harper and Ethan sit near Ava and Jake, a small snow globe resting on the empty chair between the couples because Harper could not wait until the reception to distribute them.

Other familiar faces fill the rows, people who have turned this mountain town into something larger than a location on a map. They have become the community I didn’t know I was seeking when I followed an inexplicable pull to an autumn festival.

When I reach Rocco, he takes both my hands.

“You look like the forest made you,” he says quietly.