Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 107453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 537(@200wpm)___ 430(@250wpm)___ 358(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 537(@200wpm)___ 430(@250wpm)___ 358(@300wpm)
Aiden taps his chin, hesitating. “Fair point. Know what? All that time doing hair, you can talk to anyone. You can smooth anything over. I’m gonna pass this one off to you, sweetie pie,” he says, then leans in and drops an ambush of a scratchy kiss to my cheek, leaving behind a whiff of wilted lettuce on his breath. He didn’t even brush his teeth before he dumped me on our wedding day? Then, just in case this day couldn’t get worse, he presses a key card into my hand. “Meet me tonight at eight. Room 131 at the Airport Inn before my flight tomorrow morning.”
My head explodes as I throw the card back at him. “You booked an airline ticket out of town before you broke it off?”
With zero remorse, he says, “There was only one super-saver flight left when I checked this morning, so I grabbed it. Airlines,” he says with a you get it shake of his head.
The plume turns into a wildfire, eating all the acreage inside me as I whirl around, grab the songbook, and cock it at his head.
But on his invitation to bone, he’s already yanked open the door, and is sauntering out.
A free man.
I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I’m standing in the bridal room, gripping a freaking songbook aimed at his disappearing frame. Out there, a million of my family’s friends, including my very eager big sister and my even more eager mother, are waiting for me to walk down the aisle, waiting for my brother to give me away to a getaway groom who’s ghosted me.
My brother! That’s it.
Garrett’s the calm one. Garrett’s the cool one. He always knows what to do. I gather my skirt and race across the bridal room, hunting down my clutch purse on an ottoman in the corner, snapping it open with shaky fingers, and fishing out my phone.
As I text him, tears I didn’t expect rain down. Hot, heavy, sorrowful tears.
But why the hell am I so sad when this is what I actually dreamed of last night?
2
OBJECTION
Dev
Generally speaking, I possess pretty impressive reaction times. Being a goalie and all, it’s kind of our thing. But instead of dealing with the nagging voice that’s not even in the back of my head—it’s at the motherfucking front—I’m standing stupidly in a suit, hanging in the foyer of the church as part of my usher duties, peeking around the doorway at the rows of endless guests, wondering if anyone objects at weddings anymore.
I’d like to object on account of the groom being a douchebag, as I learned last night.
Why am I holding my peace then? At the bachelor party, he sang along with “Single Ladies” like it was his personal anthem then hit on the waitress with a Hey, babe, give me one last kiss before I get hitched.
Even though the waitress laughed him off and then he laughed it off, that comment isn’t sitting right with me today. Bet it wouldn’t sit right with Garrett if he’d been at the table when it’d happened. He was outside the bar, saying goodnight to his twins at the time.
Jaw ticking, I drag a hand through my getting-longer-by-the-day hair, working through the best way to tell Garrett how I feel in, oh, say, the next ten minutes before the wedding march starts, when my buddy Ledger clears his throat from behind me. “I know it’s hard to count that high, but by my estimates there are about ten more guests coming. One hundred ninety plus ten still equals two hundred.”
Rolling my eyes, I turn his way, meeting his steely blue gaze. “Thanks. I was confused by how math works.”
“Happy to help.” He hooks his thumb toward the double front doors. “Let’s go wait outside to round up the last of the stragglers. Fucking hate tardiness.”
“You hate everything.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have to if most things didn’t suck,” he says evenly, like that’s just the way of the world.
“It’s hard being a millionaire athlete, isn’t it,” I retort, pulling my focus away from how-to-handle-a-dickhead-groom etiquette to rib my buddy. Ledger McBride’s a forward for the San Francisco Sea Dogs; I’m the goalie for the recently renamed Golden State Foxes. Technically, that makes us rivals since we play in the same city, but we’re friends not enemies.
“Pot. Kettle,” Ledger says.
“That’s me,” I say with more bravado than I feel. My ex liked to say it was hard dating a pro athlete, it was hard being in the limelight, it was hard with me being on the road. Yes, everything about seeing me was too hard for her. But that’s why Eva’s the ex.
Maybe I’m just sour on romance and seeing Aiden through the black-colored glasses I’ve been wearing lately. I really need to find those rose-colored ones again.