“It’s too tight,” Burke wanted to wrench the tie off his neck and throw it as far as he could. “Leo, it’s too tight.”
“It’s supposed to be tight.” His friend bumped his hand away from where Burke was trying to rip the bow tie off.
“I’m sure that’s not right,” Burke said. “They come in sizes, don’t they?”
The door behind him opened and his dad entered, carrying a box with a red ribbon. “That better be a pair of scissors,” Burke said.
His dad grinned at him. “No, but your mother insisted you have this before the ceremony.”
Burke couldn’t wait for the ceremony to be over, because then Ash would be his wife and they would be alone. It felt like a decade had passed since that morning on the beach instead of only a year.
He’d asked her to marry him on the same beach, months after she’d got
