“Oh, god, she’s gorgeous,” Jason says hoarsely.
He’s utterly adorable in his first mate getup. We all know who’s going to captain the ship of our life, he told Monica when they were discussing formal wedding wear. I’m wearing the first mate outfit.
Monica’s mom is already crying. Mine’s dabbing her eyes in the next row back.
I wonder what Wyatt’s thinking about while he watches my best friend walk down the aisle.
His own wedding?
Or maybe Tripp’s, which was utterly gorgeous and completely opposite of this small-town pirate affair, because when a former boy bander marries a Hollywood A-lister, you’re damn right it’s spectacular.
But he glances back at me, and I’m suddenly quite certain he’s not thinking about weddings at all.
There’s something raw and unguarded and beautiful in his gray eyes. Regret mixed with hope.
My belly dips to my toes, adding an extra shiver to my bones along the way.
I like Wyatt Morgan.
I like Wyatt Morgan.
He’s loyal. He’s protective. He’s smart. He’s brave.
He adores that perfect, sweet, happy little boy fidgeting next to him.
He’s a survivor.
Wounded in his soul, but still here. A good friend to my brother. The son my mother would’ve added to her household in a heartbeat.
The man who pushed me to be better since he got his own footing in the neighborhood.
Jason kisses Monica’s cheek as she joins him on the gazebo steps. “Now, now, save that for marriage, boy,” Pop says, and everyone laughs.
I take her bouquet—a red rose, a black rose, and a purple rose, tied together with a Jolly Roger ribbon and stuck in a rum bottle—and step back to let the wedding begin.
I might get a little teary-eyed too. The way Jason’s just watching Monica, like he’s the luckiest first mate to ever board a ship, like the only thing he needs in his life is her… Just swoon.
Thank you for finding me my missing puzzle piece, Monica told me once not long after I introduced them. But these two, I’m certain, would’ve found each other one way or another.
They were meant to be.
Wyatt’s watching me. I can feel his gaze.
And it’s not annoying, or haughty, or critical.
It’s hot.
And not just he wants to see me naked hot. But he feels it too hot.
Monica and Jason say their vows. Monica’s mom cries. My mom cries. I cry.
Tucker cries, because, “Dad, I don’t like it when people cry.”
Everyone laughs, and I wish I could hug Tucker the way Wyatt is now, just scooping him up and patting his back. “It’s happy tears,” I hear him murmur.
“I don’t like it when you cry either,” Jason tells Monica.
She wipes her eyes as she laughs. “It’s joy leaking out my soul.”
Joy.
They have joy.
I’ve always had plans. Calendars. Deadlines. Tasks. Life events to check off.
Maybe what I really need is joy.
Laughing with someone when the dishwasher leaks. When he accidentally sits on a squirt bottle of French dressing. When we knock heads in the middle of an orgasm.
I glance at Wyatt again.
Joy.
Oh my god.
He’s my joy.
My laughter.
My strength.
My challenge.
My motivation.
My rock.
My joy.
His eyes are misty too, but he doesn’t look away.
I suddenly don’t care if I can never get pregnant or give birth.
I don’t care if I never have a big wedding.
I don’t care if nothing on the outside looks perfect.
I just don’t want Wyatt to leave tomorrow.
“The rings!” Pop calls.
My mom gasps. Tucker leaps to his feet and points past the gazebo. Wyatt’s eyes leave mine, and they go comically wide. He starts to his feet too.
My dad’s jaw is flapping.
I turn to look, already smiling, because I know what’s coming, except—
“Goats?”
Monica shoots me a look and laughs like I’m crazy, but then her eyes, too, go round as a ship’s wheel.
Because there’s an army of goats cresting the hill and charging the gazebo.
The wedding guests are laughing.
So are the tourists.
But the locals who are in on all the wedding plans?
They’re not.
Grady looks at me and mouths, Goats?
I shrug, because I don’t know where they came from.
“The rings!” Monica says to Pop, who’s also staring in surprise at the herd.
“The rings,” he agrees.
Only Jason seems amused.
Confused, but also amused.
Pretty sure real pirates could invade his home and he’d just stand there watching. Unless they tried to take Monica as part of their booty.
Then I think things would get ugly.
Patrick hands Pop the rings.
A goat barrels into the gazebo from behind, darts across, and head-butts Pop’s knee.
“Oh, no, you didn’t, you little sucker!” Grady yells. “Charge! That powder monkey’s making away with our pirate captain!”
“Little fucker. Little fucker,” Long Beak Silver improvises from atop the gazebo.
“Dad—” Tucker says.
“I know. Don’t repeat it,” Wyatt tells him.
“The pirates—” Tucker says, pointing.
Sit, I mouth.
He narrows his eyes at me while two dozen locals dressed like pirates charge up the aisle and around the chairs toward the bride and groom, yelling and waving swords.
I grin back at him.
And then a goat rams my left leg, and I gasp and buckle.
“With this ring, I thee wed!” Monica yells.
“With this ring, I thee wed!” Jason yells back.
I know he’s supposed to unsheathe his sword and battle the pirates, but stars are dancing in my vision as a goat jumps on my knee and tries to lick my ears.
“I now pronounce you pirate and wife!” Pop yells.
“Back, you little fucker.” Wyatt sweeps the goat back, and then I’m up in his arms. My dad’s right behind us.
“Ellie. Hospital. Now,” my dad orders.
“It’s fine,” I say.
I want to watch the show.
And grip Wyatt a little tighter.
And, yes, probably pop a painkiller—the over-the-counter kind, because I’m sure the pain will recede soon—or maybe two.
“Dad, the goat’s licking me and the pirates are fighting,” Tucker laughs.
“The swords!” I gasp. “Wyatt, the guests need their swords!”
“I got ’em, Ellie,” Sloane calls.
And she does.
She’s handing out foam swords to all of Jason and Monica’s friends, who are leaping into the fray and battling the pirates who are trying to weave around the herd of goats to get to Monica.
“Back, you scurvy dogs!” Jason yells. “You’ll never take my bride! Piracy can’t stop true love! Only death can do that!”
“My hero,” Monica cries happily.
He scoops her over his shoulder as Sloane throws me a sword. “Behind you!”
She hasn’t given one to Patrick.
And he has four locals surrounding him.
“Babe, some help?” he says.
“Eat shit and die, you cheating asshole,” she replies.
Mr. and Mrs. Dixon gasp in horror.
And that’s before Grady’s younger cousins attack them with foam swords. “Plunder the booty!” one of them yells.
I bash foam swords with Tillie Jean, defending Wyatt while he tries to get us out of the mess of goats and pirates.
“Tucker! Careful!”
“I’ve got him, Wyatt,” Mom calls. “He’s a good pirat
e fighter. You get Ellie to safety!”
She bops Grady on the head with the butt of her foam sword, and he staggers dramatically, trips over a wooden folding chair, and faceplants in the ground.
“Oh my god!” I gasp.
“He’ll be fine,” Tillie Jean says while I continue to fight her behind Wyatt’s back. “The only person I know with a thicker skull than Grady is Cooper.”
My dad stabs Tillie Jean in the back with his foam sword, and she makes a dramatic pirate death too, yelling, “My brothers in pirate arms are coming for you, Captain Monica!” as she croaks out her fake last breaths.
“Good one, Dad!” I call.
“Safety,” he replies pointedly as he turns to help Mom defend Tucker against two more local pirates and the random goats.
Everyone’s laughing.
Wyatt’s dodging goats and tourists, not breaking a sweat, not even breathing hard as he carries me down behind Jason, who’s running with Monica tossed over his shoulder. They’re both laughing in glee, and I wonder if they’ll still go straight to The Grog for the reception, or if they’ll be fashionably late to their own party.
Probably late.
I take advantage of the fact that Wyatt’s supposed to be my boyfriend to bury my face in his neck.
It’s pretend, universe. Don’t strike us with lightning, I plead.
Dammit, he smells good.
“Thank you for being my hero,” I whisper against his hot skin.
“Thank you for letting me.” His voice is thick, and he knows.
He feels it too.
The inevitable.
Destiny.
The reason he moved in on our street when we were little.
The reason we’ve always irritated each other.
The reason he was just out of reach when I finally noticed him.
Because it’s been building up to this moment.
This exact moment here.
When he can be my hero.
And I can finally let him.
“Ellie?” he says thickly.
“Mm?”
“I don’t want to let you go.”
My heart swells three sizes and glows, radiating every ounce of affection I’ve ever denied having for this stubborn, strong, dependable man. “Your arms will eventually fall off,” I whisper. “But you’ll still be my hero even if they do.”
“I’m going to miss you.”
While Jason hustles Monica toward the Shipwreck Inn, Wyatt turns us down a side street and into a small public garden. He yanks on the wrought iron gate, and it shuts us inside with a clink.
“Are you kidnapping me?” I ask breathlessly.
“I’m seizing the moment.”
The Shipwreck Gardens are small—it’s more like garden, singular, surrounded with an ivy-covered wall, a fountain featuring a statue of Thorny Rock and his pirate treasure chest standing proudly in the center.
Wyatt sets me gently on a bench with my back to the shops on Blackbeard Avenue, so I can see the roofs of the town’s cozy houses beyond, and the gently sloped, blue haze-covered mountain peaks around us, and he squats on one knee in front of me.
My eyes bulge.
At least, until he ducks his head and laughs. “God, Ellie, it’s so easy.”
“You—you—” I sputter, but then I’m laughing with him.
Laughing and cradling his head as he laughs right there in my lap, over the crazy colonist dress I wore for Monica because I would’ve gone to her wedding dressed as a half-naked mermaid if she’d asked me to.
“How’s your leg?” Wyatt asks as we both regain control.
“Oh, it aches like a mother,” I reply cheerfully.
“Overdid it?”
“Times ten.”
He rubs his hand softly over my thigh through the fabric. “What do you need?”
“Warm bath, Motrin, and rum.” My fingers rest on his shoulders, just enough contact to make me feel grounded. “And maybe more of that.”
“This?” He tests the pressure on my muscle, and I sigh and nod.
“Is it supposed to still ache?”
“Muscle and nerve damage on top of newly healed bone. Eventually it’ll probably only be bad with weather changes, but apparently broken hips and femurs like to take their sweet time to heal.”
“No crutches?”
“I graduated crutches early, thank you.”
His lips twitch while he watches me with those intense gray eyes. “You’re a fighter.”
“I’m tired of fighting,” I whisper.
His gaze searches mine like he’s asking if I’m tired of fighting the pain, or tired of fighting him. “That’s just because you know you’ll never have a cooler wedding,” he whispers back.
My jaw drops a split second before the laughter overtakes me. “You are such a—such a—” I gasp out, searching for the right name to call him.
“Stud,” he supplies with an eyebrow wiggle, and it’s so un-Wyatt-like that I double over in laughter.
Except doubling over puts my face right next to his, and he’s smiling, his eyes alive and happy and twinkling with utter mischief, and this is everything.
He’s everything.
Everything I never knew I wanted, wrapped up in one Wyatt-shaped package.
I don’t know who starts the kiss, but once his lips are on mine, I know I won’t be the one to break it. He’s still massaging my leg while he loops his free hand behind my neck. I cling to his polo shirt, and almost laugh into the kiss thinking how crazy the two of us must look.
Him dressed like he’s a tourist from this century, me decked out like some kind of island colonist from the 1700s, a baby goat bleating beside us…
It’s the goat that breaks us apart.
Mostly because I can’t laugh and kiss him at the same time.
I need more practice.
More time.
“Ellie?” he says softly through a chuckle.
“Hmm?”
“I’m going to make love to you, and the world’s not going to end.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” I choke out.
“Challenge accepted.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Wyatt
The list of reasons I shouldn’t be playing with the hem of Ellie’s skirt is longer than my arm. Tucker could catch us here. Ellie’s parents. The baby goat that got through the gate could try to help. Someone else could walk into the gardens.
I could get in serious trouble and lose my job for indecent exposure.
But when Ellie’s only objection to me snaking my hands up under her skirt is that we’re tempting fate, I run my hands over her knees and up her thighs.
She shudders and widens her legs as her lids get heavy. “We’re not supposed to do this,” she whispers.
“I like you,” I whisper back, “and I want to make you feel good.”
“I take no responsibility for your son becoming an orphan,” she informs me.
I have zero fear that her belief that we’re physically dangerous is accurate. It’s superstitious nonsense, and it’s not like Ellie to believe in it. “What are you really afraid of?”
I don’t expect her to answer me, so I dip my thumbs low on her inner thighs. She’s not flinching away from letting me touch her scars, and I wish I could kiss her where she hurts and make it go away.
Her eyes squeeze closed as her legs fall open wider. “I’m afraid I’m not lovable.”
My heart cracks in two.
I didn’t know I had it in me for my heart to crack for another person, but it did. Split. Right in half like someone attacked it with a rusty butter knife.
“Why?”
“I’m stubborn.”
“Determined,” I correct.
“Annoying.”
“Says who?”
“You.”
“Only to get your goat.”
The baby goat bleats again, and her lips wobble upward. But her eyes—Christ.
Her eyes are breaking my heart.
“I’m too career-minded.”
“You have a calling.”
“I didn’t pick it.”
“Didn’t have to.”
Her skin is so soft, and I can smell her arousal through the layers of her dress.
“I don’t know what’s important,” she insists. “I can’t prioritize people over things. I don’t know how to let go and trust someone else. I can’t—”
“You’re Ellie Fucking Ryder. Yes, you can.”
“Why do you believe in me?”
“Mostly to piss you off.” I wink at her and stroke the edge of her panties, and she huffs out a smile and a groan.
“Wyatt.”
“Come see me in Georgia.”
“What?”
“Come see me. Me and Tucker. Spend the weekend with us. In two weeks. Three weeks. Whenever you have a free weekend. Come see us.”
She blinks quickly, but not fast enough to erase the sheen in her eyes. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to miss you.” Honesty makes my voice raw. I never thought I’d get married. Never trusted that I could fall in love and know how to do it right.
But Ellie?
She won’t let me do it wrong.
Because she’s Ellie. She’ll push me. She’ll teach me. And if she’ll love me, she’ll love me.
“Wyatt,” she whispers, and then her hands clasp around my ears and she’s kissing me.
Softly.
So softly.
Like she’s learning me. Memorizing me.
Savoring me.
I stroke the center of her panties, and her groan vibrates against my lips. I stroke her again, and she arches into my touch while she nips my lower lip. “More,” she says into our kiss.
So I give her more, stroking and teasing and touching her while we kiss, slow and easy, then slow and deep, then hard and desperate while she jerks against my fingers. I slip two under her panties, find her entrance, and thrust into her slick heat.
But it’s not enough.
I don’t want to just feel her.
I want to taste her.
“Wyatt,” she gasps when I duck under her skirts. “We’re—someone could—ohmygod do it again.”
I push her panties aside, put my mouth to her pussy, and I devour her sweet center. Her hips buck into my mouth, and fuck, I could stay here all day.
I don’t care that I can’t see a thing. I don’t care that it’s hot as hell.
Beach Reads Box Set Page 63