Gabe was trying to get me drunk on our wedding night. Or, rather, wedding dawn. We were sitting on the hood of his car overlooking Julia Pfeifer Beach in Big Sur, still in our wedding wear. The ocean swirled and danced in the early light, and you could just hear the faintest bird song.

Behind us, the sun was slowly drifting past the horizon.

It was a new day.

“So,” Gabe said, pouring a generous amount of champagne into my glass. “Let’s discuss the highlights.”

I swooned at the look of the gold band on his left hand. Gabriel Shaw was something to behold in a light gray suit.

“Calvin was the most adorable officiant known to man,” I said, smiling into my glass.

He’d laughed and stammered and blushed his way through our ceremony on the beach as Lucia (loudly) whispered encouragement from behind me. Lucia, and all four of my brothers, were in my wedding party. Gabe had Isabelle, Maya, Max, and Paige.

Lola, in a hot-pink dress that matched mine, carried the rings.

“And Lucia gave the bawdiest maid-of-honor speech I’d ever heard,” Gabe laughed.

“That’s why she’s the best,” I agreed, letting the bubbles slide down my throat. “Also, she was only warming up the crowd for the inevitable perversion of Gloria and Gladys.”

“What they gave was not a speech,” Gabe said, shaking his head. “That was like… an erotic novella.”

I spread my hands over my magenta dress, which Lucia and I had found at a thrift store one sunny Sunday morning in West Hollywood. It was the most me dress I’d ever seen, and it only made sense that I’d wear it on the day that I married my soulmate.

I breathed in the scent of the ocean, the stillness of this flawless morning. Remembered the first morning we’d woken up, in Puerta Pirámides, Argentina. Still half-asleep and disoriented, Gabe and I had walked out onto the beach halfway across the world.

And I saw a whale for the first time. Whales, actually, an entire migration.

It was one of the most perfectly beautiful moments of my entire life.

For a month, we hiked mountains in Patagonia. Took a boat from Tierra del Fuego to Antarctica. Drank wine in Bariloche and crossed the border to Chile.

And, just as Gabe promised, found Iguazu Falls, the largest waterfall in the world and watched as hundreds of brightly colored butterflies floated up and through the delicate spray.

It was hard. Harder than we’d thought it would be—to live, for a month, away from our families and our communities. Especially for two people that had never really traveled.

But once we’d pushed past the transition, Gabe and I fell madly in love with the idea of being nomads. And slowly, over four weeks, as Gabe and I laughed and hiked and fucked our way through Argentina, the solution to our living situation made itself clear.

When we got back, I moved in with Gabe for six months in Big Sur, taking clients in Monterey and Carmel and serving drinks with Gabe at The Bar at night. We hiked every inch of the forest, and I grew into the quiet peace of Big Sur. Started to crave the wilderness.

And then, at the end, Gabe ceded control of The Bar to a rotating blend of family members and friends, and he moved into my tiny house in East Los Angeles for six months. He escorted me to award ceremonies at night and diners at dawn and worked as a bartender at an assortment of trendy, L.A. spots, slowly growing into the frenetic energy of the city.

We weren’t different in each location, but we were expansive. Allowing our lives to take on the shape of our surroundings.

We’d been back in Big Sur for six months now, culminating in our sweet, glorious wedding, and it was almost time to head back to the city. A bittersweet feeling we were both learning to adjust to. We didn’t know how long we’d do the split, and maybe we’d even do it forever, but what we did know was that it worked for us.

And that was all that mattered.

But first: the honeymoon.

“Gorgeous,” Gabe said, pulling me onto his lap. “You’ve been staring at that ocean and not celebrating with me for whole minutes now.” He kissed up my neck and nuzzled under my ear. My hands tightened around his tie, tugging slightly. “What are you thinking about?”

I swung my legs around his lap, arching an eyebrow when it was obvious he was rock hard against his suit pants.

“I think the question is, dear husband, what have you been thinking about?”

With deft fingers, I freed his cock, sighing as I dragged my fingers up and down the length of him. Gabe groaned huskily, big palms cupping my breasts through the fabric of my wedding dress.

“Honeymoon sex,” he whispered against my ear.

I shivered. We were due on a plane in just a few hours, heading to Montana. The plan was two weeks in Glacier National Park because Gabe wanted fresh mountain air and crystal lakes. Then, two weeks in Paris because I wanted late-night dinners and famous art in a cultural mecca.

Compromise. Gabe and I had turned it into a fucking art form.

“What did you have in mind?” I teased my bearded Viking, sliding my panties to the side and lowering myself onto his hard cock. We rocked together, kissing and laughing as the sun rose, bathing us in light.

“How much rope are you going to pack?” Gabe growled. He was dragging his thumbs over my nipples, and I was grinding my clit against him, and my orgasm was building just over the horizon.

“So much, Gabriel,” I sighed, throwing my head back. His hands landed on my hips, and he lifted me, our rhythm blending together. “And don’t worry. I’ll have you on your knees and begging in no time.”

“God, yes, Josie. Please,” he said, pulling me down for a feverish kiss.

The kiss of two newlyweds, married for just eight hours. On the precipice of adventure—not a new life because we’d already created a beautiful one but a joyous continuation.

I wrapped my arms around my husband and fucked the two of us into spine-tingling orgasms. Gabe squeezed me tight as he shuddered against me, whispering my name over and over. I laid my head against his chest, directly over his heart, and memorized the sound.

“Just so you know, our newlywed sex is going to end up all over the Big Sur Channel.”

I laughed softly. “They’ll be talking about it for weeks.”

“Maybe even years.”

We were quiet for a moment, and I let all the memories of the wedding flood in.

“Tell me again what you said. During your speech,” I said, looking up into his dark eyes.

He grinned, rubbing a hand down his jaw. “I never want to stop discovering new things with you. Never want to be content to do what’s easy when we could be doing something that’s thrilling. That I no longer view our life together as linear, a straight line down the same road. But rather a map of continents and stars, glorious and winding, ours to explore without limits. That you—” Gabe cleared his throat, and when his eyes filled with tears, I thought my heart was going to fly from my body. “You are my true soulmate, Josie. In all of this. Forever.”

I kissed him for a long time after that.

When I finally pulled back I could only say, “I love you,” over and over again.

Because Gabe had been right. Love could be reckless and passionate and intense and good all at the same time.

My inner compass hadn’t been broken but merely searching for its true north.

Gabriel.

My Viking.

My home.