“Don't ask me. I'm going off what I've seen in movies.”
Allie smiled. Properly. “I feel like whatever happens today will happen. As long as I can walk out of the church as Mrs. Joe Walker, I'll be okay. Everything else is just a side note.”
We both stilled as someone yelled Allie's name in a panic from downstairs.
She rolled her eyes. “Honestly,” she whispered. “You'd think my mom was getting married, not me.”
There was that eerie air of panic from her, yes. “She just wants it to go well.”
“Would you be saying it if it was your mom and your wedding?”
“No. I'd be jumping out that window.” I pointed to the square-shaped glass. “Head first.”
“There you go.” She sipped her coffee and put the mug down on the wooden floor next to her, along with the photo album she'd been looking through. “I think it's all so insane. This fancy wedding is all for our families, and all I want to do is just marry the guy, Mia. I just want to wake up next to him and call him my husband and share his name and know that he's mine forever. I could marry him anywhere and it wouldn't matter. Is that insane?”
I opened my mouth, then paused. Was it?
No.
Not at all.
“Oh, god, it's insane, isn't it?”
I shook my head and squeezed her hand. “No. It makes perfect sense.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Wow. You agreed on something all lovey-dovey without barfing.”
I tapped my fingers against hers. She was the worst. “I just agree with you, Al. It's all just... stuff... isn't it? All the dresses and tiaras and flowers.”
“And seating charts and menus and name cards and confetti and all the other shit I won't remember.”
“Exactly. If you want to marry someone, it doesn't matter if it's like Prince William and Kate's or in a barn surrounded by pig shit.”
Allie paused. “Well. The barn would be okay as long as there was a limit on the pig shit.”
She had a point. “Still... I think if someone said to me it's a barn full of pig shit or you could never get married, I'd take the barn.”
“Hold on. You've used the l-word and the m-word in the space of 24 hours and you haven't passed out? Are you sick? Running a fever?” She reached forward and touched my forehead with the back of her hand. “No. Well, damn, Mia O'Halloran. I'm not gonna lie, of the things I'm looking forward to today, talking to West Rykman is right up there on the number two spot after getting married.”
“Don't be stupid.” I batted her hand away just as her mom yelled for her yet again. You wouldn't believe we were twenty-five years old. Sitting up here hiding made it feel like we were thirteen again. “We should go down before she calls the police for a search party.”
Allie sighed, but nodded, and crawled across the floor to unlatch the door. “Watch out below!” she shouted a whole five seconds before she let it go and the ladder slid down with a crash. “I'm done with my coffee now.”
“Allie! Do not tell me you were hiding up there to drink your coffee!”
I crawled over next to her and smiled down. “Hi.”
Her mom looked up at us. It was the worst attempt at a frown I'd ever seen—there was too much love in her eyes. “I should have known. The make-up girls are here. Let's go.”
We both got down from the attic, and when we went back downstairs to where the make-up girls were waiting, I saw my phone flashing with a notification, and I swallowed hard as I picked it up and opened the text.
West: I'll be there. Waiting...
West's eyes had been on me the whole time.
From the moment I had to walk down the aisle with my ex, to when I stood at the front and dared glance back at him, and to the moment I had to fight my tears as I watched my best friend marry the man she loved more than anything in the world.
Even as I walked back down the aisle, somehow with a tiny three-year-old bridesmaid attached to me in place of Darren, West had watched me.
His gaze burned red hot every second it was on me. I felt it dancing over me, touching every part of my body in turn. He explored my body entirely at his leisure, and from where I was standing, it felt like he'd missed everything that had happened around him, like all he'd seen was me.
That was him. That was how he made me feel, and it was the simplest thing in the world.
I felt wanted—no, needed.
Even now, as we were sitting and waiting for Darren to finish his speech, there was one set of eyes on me, and they belonged to one person. West Rykman, the red hot stripper with the body of a saint and the mouth of a dirty sinner.