A/N: The new chapter of "We Three Hearts" is now available!


March 18th 2023

Chapter 77
We Elevate For All Time

All things considered, for the amount of time they'd had to get this wedding together, they had done very well for themselves. They could have probably done it even faster, if they'd been willing to compromise further, but that was not their aim, no. They wanted to give Ella and Taylor a wedding to remember, and they were right on track to make that happen. The first step, where the couple and their entourage were concerned, was to get them both ready for the moment where they would see each other for the first time. As far as not seeing each other before the wedding went, that part had been very easy, seeing as the groom hadn't been in the same state as the bride until all of two hours before they said their vows to one another. Taylor's preparations would be left to his side of things, whereas Ella's…

She'd had her hair and makeup seen to by none other than Ava Nash, and she'd come out on the other side of this already looking as stunning as ever. She had her little sisters and her daughter wide-eyed with awe, her best friend giddy with excitement, and her mother good and struggling to hold back tears. The nails had been seen to by Lea even as Ava had been busy with the rest, and before they knew it they were off to Sullivan Stables. There was no way Lucas would have his eldest seeking a venue for her wedding and not provide it to her so easily.

When they arrived there, Ella was compelled to keep her eyes closed, so she wouldn't see too much of the details until later. She had been involved in the planning, and the choosing, sure, but she had never seen it all put together, and they wanted it to be a surprise.

The last step as far as getting their bride ready, before making it to the dress, the shoes, and other accessories, was most likely one that few if any of their guests would have seen before, and that was the presence of a tattoo artist and her tools. They'd invited Cheyenne to the wedding itself, but first and foremost they had hired her to do what she did best, the better to make something happen that the nearlyweds had waited on for so, so long. Covering it afterward in as neat of a way as she could, minding what was to come, she had gone and colored in the final quarter of the compass tattoo on Ella. The outline was unified, the quarters clearly defined in the choice of colors in each one, and in this last one, on her and on him, too, the leading color would be blue. When she saw it completed, Ella was the one who looked ready to cry, and her best friend/roommate of the past four years was quick to step in, making sure that her makeup would hold steady.

"You're going to do his next, right?" Ella asked Cheyenne, and she confirmed that she would, which she did, within minutes of finishing with hers, and later on Lucas and Maya would both have this same thought from watching the couple get their quarters colored in: Ella and Taylor had each been as relieved to see the completed image as they'd been made joyful at the reminder that the other was out there, nearby, on the property, just like they were. The wait was nearly over.

Maya had seen Ella's dress before, had been with her when she'd bought it, but seeing it on her that day, the completed look along with it… She'd managed to just skate on the edge of crying before, but that time, there was no saving her from it, from the emotional hit of seeing her eldest about to be married. She really didn't know what it was about it that got her going, that got any of them going, but whatever it was, it got her good, and she was as careful not to touch the new tattoo as she was in making sure not to cry makeup or anything else on to her daughter when she embraced her.

"I love you so much," she told her, and Ella squeezed her as best she could.

"I love you, too, Mom," she replied, a tremor of that emotion in her, too. "I'm so glad you found me," she told her, and Maya nodded. "I don't think I say it enough."

"Oh, you do, more than you think."

Maya made very sure to be there and document the moments when the rest of the girls came and saw Ella in all her bridal glory. Marianne, Kacey, Remy, Lucy, Mackenzie, Aubrey… Tori… The triplets and the little sisters saw her and found her to be every bit a princess from fairy tales. Marianne gave a sort of unintentional imitation of their mother for the way she started to cry happy tears. Tori, now, when she got a look of her mother, in the last minutes before she got married, hurried over to her, and put her arms around her. Ella bent to hug her back, her own baby girl, the one whose entire existence had brought her on the path to even stand there that day. That fact was not lost on any of them, and they would remind her, too, when they got the chance. If not for her, she might have never ended up in Austin, never met the Friars, never met Taylor, and who knew what her life would have been like…

Maya had to confide her camera to her firstborn after this, as she needed to go and take her place while Marianne would be right there in the ideal place to accomplish her given task: Ella could not have been made to pick, and she wasn't going to, so she had not one, not two, but three maids of honor: her daughter, her sister, and her best friend. And standing in wait there with the other two, who were just as aware and just as amused to see how it would go, Marianne got to record the moment when Lucas saw Ella walk in to stand by him and take his arm so that he'd lead her to her groom. It was a wonder that they got the sound of their voices on that video and not just a lot giggling from behind the camera.

It didn't matter at all in that moment that he hadn't held her as a baby, hadn't seen her take first steps or go off to school, hadn't known that she'd existed at all until she came to them, a sixteen-year-old with a weeks-old baby girl. He saw her in that moment, and he might as well have raised her from the day she'd come into the world. His heart was a ram in his chest, striking again and again. Her smile was even more powerful than it had been earlier that morning, and he just wanted her to keep getting reasons to smile that way for all the days of her life.

"Ready when you are," he told her, willing a deep breath through his lungs. Ella smirked, pointed toward the doors, and then touched her ear. The music hadn't started yet, so they couldn't head outside yet either. They had to wait. "Right, sorry," he told her, and Ella turned to look at her maids of honor, all three of them stifling laughter, some succeeding better than others. "Oh, is that how it is?" Lucas showed mock insult to his daughter, granddaughter, and cousin, to which they all nodded. "Yeah, I figured it would be."

When the music did come, everyone had to take a deep breath, not just him. They knew their moment and, when it came, the doors opened for them. They made their way out, keeping pace, and Lucas soon felt his daughter's nerves in her, the anticipation now at full capacity, if there was such a thing. He didn't have to guess the exact moment when she saw him; her grip on his arm relaxed immediately and she seemed to walk just a little bit faster.

"Pace, remember?" he whispered at her ear, and she quietly laughed.

"Thanks, Dad."

"Anytime."

The way they looked at each other, Ella, and Taylor, after having been apart again on this final stretch ahead of graduation, each one of their guests could probably feel some of it, too. The two of them weren't the only ones to be crying happy tears.

Lucas was sure that he could have forgotten himself once he'd done his part, but then he turned, and he saw Maya, and his feet took him to her. He sat by her side, and he held her hand as the time came. Soon, the bride and groom would have exchanged their vows, and the two of them would be invited to kiss as they were declared husband and wife and everyone around them cheered as loud as they could. The youngest among them – some all of two weeks old – didn't exactly like the big noise, so their voices were heard as well, if not for the same reasons.

"Hey…" Maya came to find her husband, shortly before the couple came along for the start of the reception. He'd offered to take baby Finn aside for a bit of quiet and had been granted the tiny boy to hold. They both looked very sweet together, with Finn being very familiar in the care of any of the Friars nowadays. "What are you two doing out here?" she wondered.

"Breathing, I guess," Lucas told his wife as he looked to the baby boy. Maybe it was that they'd only ever had girls, but he found it peculiar to be holding this little guy now, peculiar in a good way… He could be loud with the best of them, but when he was quiet, like this…

"I've been thinking about her, too," Maya told him, and he looked back at her.

He guessed that it'd be obvious to anyone who took the moment to consider it, but of course this day had hit him with thoughts of his mother. He imagined her out here, at her granddaughter's wedding, and he knew she would have been ecstatic about the whole thing.

"Now I'm imagining her out there, dancing with Taylor…" Maya went on, and as was very likely her aim, this made him smile, then chuckle.

"Yeah, she would have been all over the place with him," he agreed, and the image was very easy to conjure up. It was all too easy for this one innocent thought to snowball and take him to all these other moments that his mother had missed and would miss, through no fault or desire of her own. It just snuck up on him out of nowhere, and he wished he could control it, but he couldn't.

All he could do was try and pull himself together, which was unfortunately not fast enough for Finneas Hart-Lane, as the boy started to cry and wouldn't stop until his Aunt Maya took up the task of holding him and soothed him back down. Not far off, she spotted Wyatt coming at a stride, having clearly caught the sounds of his son's crying and gone in haste to find him. Maya reassured him and – hesitantly – he went back to where he was helping get things ready for the newlyweds' arrival.

"We're all good, huh, aren't we?" Maya cooed down to her nephew and kissed the top of his head. "Why do babies have to smell this good?" she breathed, and it brought a smile back to Lucas as he watched her with the boy.

"Preservation?" he offered.

"Something like that, definitely," Maya agreed. "Don't worry, bud, we're keeping you right here," she whispered near his ear.

Finneas would be returned to his father in time, and then the reception would be underway, Ella and Taylor back with them. Maya and Lucas would be there, sitting with them, as would the rest of their girls, across from the Munroes and Orlandos. It had been one of the couple's guidelines that they wanted all these people there with them, no one relegated to another table. It didn't matter to them how they made it work so long as they made it work, so they did as they were asked and did very well for themselves.

Still, as they all sat there, a strange thought came out of nowhere upon Maya. She looked at all of them there to celebrate Taylor, and Ella, and as she'd looked at her daughter especially, she'd been left to remember that she hadn't always been her girl, that once upon a time she had been Summer Levesque, that she'd had another mother, another father, that she'd had an older sister who, as far as they knew, still lived in Austin. What might they think of the fact that she'd just gotten married that day if they knew? Did they think of her at all? Did they miss her? Did they regret how things had ended between all of them? She wasn't about to go and prod what didn't need prodding, wasn't going to put her nose where it didn't belong, but… she had to wonder, especially whether Ella had been thinking about them today. Did she wish they could have been there?

"Mommy, can we dance now?" Kacey asked, looking beyond eager to get out of her chair when they'd finished eating their dinner. Remy and Lucy were giving the same impression, and by extension the little sisters did, too. It wouldn't take much more than that to get them going.

"Soon, cub, I promise, okay?"

"How much soon?" Remy asked.

"After dessert," Maya told them, and they blinked… and the squirming stopped. Now she had their attention, and while she smiled to them, she couldn't even realize that she'd allowed her other thoughts to slip away, all concerns gone away and replaced instead by the here and now of her daughter's wedding. "We eat dessert first, and then you get your dad there, ask him to show you some of his moves." The girls nodded, following her guidance, and storing the information away for later.

Lucas quickly had the girls copying his 'moves' when the moment came for them all to take to the dance floor. These were definitely a lot funnier than the ones he'd displayed in taking Ella out there, but then that routine they had practiced together with Donna Devereaux to guide their feet. When he turned his attention to his small girls, his new choreography might have been called 'ode to summer.' The season would likely continue to suffer their grief, but it would also be a time for renewal thanks to the installation of the Munroe-Friars and that held all the promise of a wonderful summer.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners