Chapter 51.1
He didn't remember walking down the aisle.
Brett remembered the morning — waking up in the Singapore penthouse alone, because Lance had spent the night in the presidential suite next door ("bad luck to see the bride," Nico had insisted, filming everything), and finding the white silk robe from La Perla laid across the foot of the bed with a handwritten note in Lance's sharp, slanted script:
See you at the altar. — L
He remembered Madame Elise and her team arriving at 6am with steamers and pins and champagne, remembered sitting in the makeup chair for three hours while they curled his honey blonde hair into soft, old-Hollywood waves, pinned half up with the pearl comb from the first dress fitting, remembered the way his hands shook so hard he couldn't do his own eyeliner and Sophie from the lingerie salon had to do it for him, whispering "breathe, ma chérie, breathe" in French.
He remembered the lingerie — not the black panties from the superhero night, not the schoolgirl socks — but the bridal set. The white French lace balconette and high-waisted panties with the garter belt from Chapter 48, Set 1, the one Lance had first seen. Sophie laced him into it like armor, her fingers quick and sure, and when she was done Brett looked in the mirror and saw a bride, not a boy in a costume.
He remembered the dress.
The third one. The French Chantilly lace with the long sleeves and the high neck and the illusion back with the hundred tiny silk buttons. Madame Elise herself did the buttons, one by one, her hands trembling with age and emotion, while Nico held Brett's train and cried openly behind his camera.
"You are beautiful," Madame Elise whispered in French, kissing both of Brett's cheeks. "He will weep."
The veil was cathedral length, edged in the same lace as the dress, and when they settled it over his hair, Brett finally — finally — let himself cry, careful, quiet tears that Sophie dabbed away before they could ruin his makeup.
He remembered the car — a white Rolls-Royce Phantom, ribbons on the hood — and the drive to , the old convent chapel in Singapore Lance had flown his entire family in for, the one with the white stone arches and the stained glass that threw rainbows on the floor.
He remembered Nico walking him to the big wooden doors, squeezing his hand through his white satin glove.
"You ready, Brielle?" Nico asked, his own eyes wet.
Brett, in six-inch white Louboutin So Kates under ten feet of lace train, his D cup breasts lifted perfect in the boned bodice, his 23-inch waist cinched impossibly small, his left hand flashing the three-carat diamond and the new platinum band waiting to be blessed, nodded.
"I've been ready since Montana," Brett whispered.
The doors opened.
He didn't remember the walk. He remembered Lance.
Lance Sullivan, in a black Tom Ford tuxedo, standing at the altar under the arch of white orchids, his blue eyes — those impossible blue eyes — locked on the doors, and when he saw Brett, his entire face broke.
He wept. Openly. Unashamedly. His shoulders shook, his hand came up to cover his mouth, and his best man — his brother, Michael — had to steady him.
Brett floated down the aisle on Nico's arm, the train flowing behind him like water, the veil catching the light, the choir singing something in Latin he didn't understand, and all he could see was Lance.
When he reached the altar, Lance took both his hands in his, his thumbs stroking over Brett's satin gloves, his voice wrecked when he whispered, "You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."
Brett laughed through his tears, his cherry lips trembling. "You said that in the lingerie shop."
"And I meant it then, too," Lance said, and the whole chapel laughed wetly.
The vows were simple. Lance had written his.
"Brett," Lance said, his voice carrying in the stone chapel, clear and sure despite the tears, "you came into my life as a dare and you stayed as my miracle. You let me dress you, and undress you, and love you in every costume — superhero, schoolgirl, bride — and I promise you, for the rest of our lives, I will never stop seeing the girl in Montana who was brave enough to say yes to hormones, to heels, to me. I will love you in white lace and in nothing at all. I will be your husband."
Brett couldn't speak for a moment. He just stood there, in his hundred-thousand-dollar lace dress, crying into his veil, holding Lance's hands like a lifeline.
Then he took a shaky breath and said the vows he'd practiced for three weeks in the mirror.
"Lance," Brett whispered, his soft alto echoing, "you saw me before I saw myself. You bought me my first pair of heels, my first bra, my first wedding dress. You made me Brielle. I promise to be your wife, your fantasy, your best friend. In sickness and in health, in couture and in cosplay, till death do us part."
Lance slid the platinum band onto Brett's left ring finger, on top of the engagement diamond, his hands shaking so hard Michael had to help.
Brett slid Lance's band on, his own hands steady now, sure.
"I now pronounce you husband and wife," the priest said in his Singaporean accent. "You may kiss the bride."
Lance lifted Brett's veil slowly, reverently, like unwrapping a gift, and cupped Brett's face in both hands.
He kissed him — soft at first, then deeper, desperate, full of five years of Montana and Singapore and every costume in between — and the chapel erupted.
Brett kissed his husband back, his hands fisted in Lance's tuxedo lapels, his ten-foot train pooled around their feet, his pigtails long gone, replaced by a queen's crown of pearls, and thought, distantly, this is it. This is the moment everything was for.
They walked back down the aisle hand in hand, husband and husband, wife and wife, bride and groom, to a shower of white rose petals, and Lance leaned down and whispered in Brett's ear, his voice full of wicked promise for the wedding night:
"Can't wait to take this dress off you."
Brett, in full Chantilly lace, in front of 200 guests, blushed crimson and whispered back:
"My pleasure."…