by Cassia Leo
I was halfway through the first chapter when Drea stepped out onto the terrace in a powder-blue dress and a hat of the same color, which looked like something Kate Middleton would wear. “Is she ready?” I asked, standing from the chair.
Drea’s mouth dropped open. “Uh, yes. Are you? You’re not even dressed!”
I chuckled as I stepped inside the suite. “I am ready. I just have to change into my suit. Won’t take more than ten minutes.”
“Well, chop-chop. I told the car service to get here thirty minutes earlier, to head off potential traffic.”
I shook my head. “It’s nine p.m. on a Tuesday. Not exactly rush hour.”
“This isn’t Portlandia. This is London.”
“Oh, sweet summer child. You’re obviously still not familiar with Portland traffic,” I replied, rounding the bed.
“And I pray I never am,” she shot back as she exited the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
As I finished getting dressed and exited the walk-in closet, Drea let out a shrill gasp. Rushing out into the hallway, I was not surprised to find Laurel and Drea arguing in the foyer. Laurel was attempting to push past Drea to get to a door that lead to the second bedroom of our suite, where Rose was sleeping while my assistant Jade watched Netflix on her laptop. Drea was unsuccessfully trying to push Laurel back toward the hotel corridor, when Laurel noticed me watching them from the hallway.
My pixie was wearing nude heels and a sleeveless cream-colored dress, which was cut above the knee and hugged all her killer curves. Like Drea, she wore a Kate Middleton-esque hat, but Laurel’s had a small mesh veil that covered her eyes.
She smiled as she looked me up and down. “I love that gray suit on you.”
Drea whipped her head around and gasped again. “You’re not supposed to see each other!”
I shook my head, my gaze traveling the length of Laurel’s body as I approached. “Look at you,” I said, swallowing the knot in my throat. “You’re a fucking knockout… But she’s right. What the hell are you doing here?”
“I can’t do it,” Laurel replied, her eyes begging me to understand. “I can’t leave her alone. She can sleep in Jade’s arms at the ceremony. Besides, Jade told me she wanted to be there. This way everyone gets what they want.”
Drea let out a heavy sigh as she walked away and opened the door to leave the suite. “I’ll be next door if anyone needs me.”
I looked into Laurel’s brown eyes and shook my head. “No. Rose is staying here with Jade, then you and I are getting a room and I’m going to fuck you senseless. Unless you’re not in the mood, then that’s totally okay.”
She pressed her lips together to keep from smiling.
“Rose will be sound asleep and perfectly safe with Jade,” I continued. “Tonight, you’re mine… and I’m yours. Just you and me, pixie. No fear, remember?”
She swallowed hard. “Okay,” she whispered, slowly nodding her head as if she were trying to convince herself, or scared her hat would fall off. “Okay, just you and me. But you have to promise me one thing.”
I chuckled. “Baby, I’m going to be making about a hundred promises to you tonight. One more can’t hurt.”
She reached up and curled her fingers around my lapels, staring at my chest for a moment before she looked up at me. “Promise me we’ll save a piece of cake for the baby. She loves lemon frosting.”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on. We’d better get going before Drea has a stroke.”
As I watched Laurel’s dad walk her down the aisle in the center of the Globe Theater, my eyes stung with the threat of tears. I blinked a few times and smiled to try to convince my brain to stop trying to make me cry. It was difficult to keep composed when you realized you were married to the most beautiful woman in the world.
Mark helped Laurel up the stairs to the altar, which had been set up on the stage. A group of less than forty friends and family were seated on either side of the aisle, including Mark’s wife, whom Laurel had never met until yesterday’s dinner; my mom and dad; my sister Jessica and her first monogamous boyfriend in half a decade; my brother John and his fiancée; Sean Dougherty and his new girlfriend; and Drea and Barry, and their parents, to name a few.
As the minister went through the short speech he used for vow renewals, I watched Laurel intently. I observed the rise and fall of her chest as she took slow breaths and rubbed my thumbs over the backs of her trembling hands. Though she’d mostly gotten her anxiety under control, she did pass out a few months ago when she had to give her first speech at a benefit for our new Reboot Humanity Foundation. She admitted to me afterward that, as she stood on the stage talking about her own PTSD with hundreds of faces staring back at her, she kept wondering if everyone was watching her and imagining the event that caused her PTSD.
These thoughts spiraled into a full-blown panic attack and she passed out as she was attempting to leave the stage. Some assholes actually tweeted pictures and video of the event, which only elicited more tweets and posts accusing Laurel of faking a panic attack for publicity and donations. Luckily, the trolls quickly latched onto the next news story, and her humiliation was forgotten by the media within a couple days. It took two weeks, however, to convince her to leave the house.
“And now, husband and wife will read their vows,” the minister said, nodding his bald head in Laurel’s direction.
She smiled as I tightened my grip on her hands, then she cleared her throat and looked me in the eye. “As many of you know, I am not very good at public speaking anymore. Don’t Google that.” She took a deep breath as she waited for the muted laughter from the guests to die down. “So, as much as I love you,” she said, addressing me now, “I wasn’t looking forward to getting up here, in possibly the most famous theater in the world, and exposing my most intimate thoughts in front of the people whose opinions I care about the most. But now that I’m here… I feel… okay. More okay than I’ve felt in ages. There’s something about the way you look at me, like I’m the only person in the room, that puts my soul at ease.”
I flashed her a soft smile as I nodded ever so slightly to encourage her to keep going.
She sniffed as her eyes filled with tears. “There’s no promise I could make today that I haven’t already made to you in private. And I know the purpose of this ceremony is to make those promises aloud in front of the people we love, but today I’m going to do something a little different. Today, I’m only going to make two promises.
“First, I promise not to keep score of your bad deeds. I know in the past I’ve kept score of how many times you’ve hurt my feelings or forgotten to clean your beard trimmings out of the sink, but I’m not going to do that anymore. Marriage is not a game where you deduct and score points. Marriage is real life, and it’s messy. Sometimes, you’re a better husband than I am a wife. And sometimes, I’m a better wife than you are a husband. And that’s okay, because I know if it ever became severely imbalanced, we’d be back in Bonnie’s office faster than we could say the d-word. Which brings me to promise number two.
“I promise that if I ever feel like our marriage is in trouble, I will tell you long before I tell anyone else. I know you can’t read my mind, and in the past, I’ve allowed small worries in my mind to ripen into full-fledged catastrophes. But I promise that as long as we’re together, which I hope is for the rest of our lives, you’ll be the first to know when I’m hurting or when I’m scared about the future.
“For almost a decade now, you’ve been my best friend, my lover, and my protector. Four years ago, you proved the ferocity of your bravery and love and became my hero,” she said, tears flowing freely down her face as she referred to the moment I pushed her out of the bathroom. “I look forward to spending the next seventy years in the solace of your strength.”
The minister handed me some tissues and I helped Laurel wipe tears from her face. She let out a congested laugh when Drea raced up onto the altar to collect the spent tissues. I waited for Drea to take her seat again befor
e I proceeded with my vows.
Taking Laurel’s hands again, I drew in a long breath and looked her in the eye. “On our first date, I brought paper bags and a black Sharpie to your apartment, so we could put bags over our heads and answer personal questions about each other while pretending to be the other person. I told you I’d gotten the idea from a girl I’d dated. Well, the truth is… it was actually a game I made up, and I played that game with every girl I went out with. I was young and, well, let’s be honest, kind of a jerk.”
I paused for the guests to laugh. “But I didn’t tell you the real reason why I never played that game with anyone else after we played it. Even when we were broken up for a little while during our senior year.” I reached up and brushed my thumb across her cheek to wipe away a stray tear. “I asked you on our first date, ‘What’s one thing you’ve wished for that you think you might never get?’ And you were supposed to answer as if you were me. But you accidentally answered as yourself. Anyway, you quickly brushed off the error and answered as me. I don’t remember what you said after you corrected your mistake. Sorry.” I smiled as she shook her head. “But I’ll never forget what you said the first time you answered the question. I asked, ‘What’s one thing you’ve wished for that you think you might never get?’ And you said, ‘Happiness.’”
This time I paused to collect myself as I was hit with a monster wave of emotion. “Your honesty and vulnerability in that one tiny moment was like… like a bright flicker of stunningly pure hope in a world I’d come to think of as dark and soulless. It was the first time in almost three years I didn’t fear the future. And as long as we’ve been together, that feeling has never gone away. My hope has wavered, yes. But you always manage to bring it back. You’re the only one who can do that.
“I know we’ve had a few rough years, especially the last few, but I promise that no matter how bad things get, I’m going to choose to trust you. I promise I’ll try to never let my fears get between us. I promise to always try to understand you, your hopes, your fears, your desires… even when they might seem a little weird.
“I promise to listen to you, I mean put down my phone and really listen. I promise to make sure you always know how thankful I am to have you in my life. I promise to be a patient and protective father, as generous with my time and love as I am with my bank account.”
“You mean our bank account,” she corrected me.
“More like your bank account. But, anyway, back to my vows,” I replied, laughing along with the guests as Laurel rolled her eyes. Placing a conciliatory kiss on the back of her hand, I looked her in the eye as I continued, “I promise to take care of you and your beautiful heart. But most of all, I promise I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you never feel as if true joy is beyond your reach. I might not be able to give you the son we lost, but I promise I’ll do everything I can to give you a life filled with overwhelming love and happiness. I love you more than you can imagine, pixie.”
She let out a deep sigh as tears began sliding down her cheeks again. “I can’t imagine loving anyone more.”
Taking her face gently in my hands, I kissed her forehead. Then I took her into my arms and squeezed her tightly, the way she liked being held because it made her feel safe. And when her body relaxed into me and her breathing slowed, I knew I could let go and she would be okay, which was all I wanted and all I’d ever want.
Releasing fall 2019… Amber Sky.
Part 1
“Beneath an amber sky,
I searched among the trees.
And underneath the brush,
I found both you and me.”
CHAPTER ONE
MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
I didn’t know how I’d ended up on Route 120 in Middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania. All I knew was my phone had stopped picking up a cell signal about the same time the sun went down twenty miles back. Now my brilliant navigation system was dying on me, flickering and flashing in the darkness like a dying star. I thought technology was supposed to prevent us from getting lost. It seemed lost was my default setting these days.
I probably should have turned around, but I had a bone-deep sense I’d been down this road before, and it led somewhere beautiful. In fact, I was sure of it. This looked exactly like the road we’d traveled on during a family road trip twenty years ago.
What I wouldn’t have given to be twelve years old again. To be sitting in the tobacco-scented backseat of my dad’s Volvo, the backs of my thighs stuck to the leather seat with sweat, the hot summer air blasting my face through the open window. A green blur of trees streaking past us as we suffered through my father’s piercingly dead-on impersonation of Bob Dylan. I’d have gladly relived my awkward, gangly transition into puberty—I’d even endure the countless heartaches that had come and gone since then—for just one more chance to beg my dad to change the radio station.
I tapped haphazardly at the “buttons” on the navigation screen—Could they really be called buttons if they were just images on a screen impersonating as buttons?—and the display fluttered back to life. I smacked the steering wheel with sheer delight, and let out a whooping holler of relief. But the relief was short-lived.
The screen died along with what seemed like the entire electrical system in my car. Inside the cabin, I was plunged into total darkness. Outside the car, the forest became a sea of black through which I hurtled at fifty miles per hour, nothing but the spiny, silvery shadows of trees to roughly sketch out my proximity in space.
Before I could right the steering wheel, the road disappeared beneath me, and I was suddenly and violently bumping along rough terrain. With no light to guide me, my panicked mind quickly realized I had veered off the road. By the time I got my bearings and attempted to slam on the brakes, while also wrenching the steering wheel sharply to the left, it was too late. The right side of my car slammed into something more solid than the darkness.
My eyelids fluttered as I regained consciousness.
There was something in my eyes.
I was moving.
No, someone was moving me.
Blinking furiously against the sticky substance in my eyelashes, I reached up to wipe my eyes when a sharp pain shot through my shoulder and discharged into my neck and chest.
I cried out in pain. “Help!”
“Don’t move!” a gruff voice commanded.
“I can’t see! I’m blind!”
“You’ve got blood in your eyes!” the man shouted back.
The top of my thigh bumped into something that felt like the bottom of a steering wheel. The bitter stench of gasoline saturated my nostrils. The man grunted as he seemed to pull me out of the car.
He tossed me up in the air a few inches, adjusting my weight in his arms. I yelped at the momentary weightlessness, a sensation I recognized from my nightmares. But his grip on me was tight and assured as he carried me away to God knows where.
As I began to contemplate where I was being taken to, my limbs grew cold and weak. My hands trembled, and my head became heavy. The stabbing pain in my shoulder dulled as my consciousness ebbed with the rhythm of my savior’s footsteps.
I woke to the sound of my own moans. Trying to open my eyes, I was panicked to find my eyes glued shut. My shoulder was ablaze with fiery pain.
“I can’t open my eyes,” I rasped, a dry ache throttling my larynx.
“Keep still, and I’ll wipe your eyes again,” the gruff voice said, much gentler this time.
I could feel I was lying on something soft, perhaps a hospital bed. But if I was in the hospital, why did it smell like mothballs?
I flinched slightly as he swept a warm washcloth over my left eyelid. The cloth wreaked with the sharp, metallic tang of blood. My shoulder exploded in pain again as I tried to reach toward my face.
Laying my arm over my belly, I whimpered. “What’s wrong with my shoulder?”
“I reckon you broke your collarbone. I was just fixin’ you a sling when you woke up,” he replied as he continued
wiping my other eye.
The smell of blood dissipated as he finished wiping my sticky lashes. I took that as permission to open my eyes, but I was almost afraid of what I’d find. If he was “fixin’” me a sling, that meant we weren’t in an emergency room—at least, not the kind of ER I wanted to be in.
I opened my eyes slowly, blinking a few times to dislodge the lashes still stuck together on the outer corner of my eye. Looking up at the dimly lit, rusted tin ceiling, I clenched my teeth to keep from crying out in fear.
“You okay there? I…I got some of this here pain medicine. I ain’t used it in some years, but I reckon it still works.”
My lips trembled as tears slid down my temples. “Where am I?” I choked the words out of my parched throat.
He sighed, and I finally turned to look at him, ignoring the dull ache in my neck. His eyes locked on mine for a split second before he looked down at his feet. His dark hair was hidden beneath a dark-green baseball cap, just as his face was hidden beneath a dark beard. But the visible features were striking: his sharp cheekbones and strong brow looked almost out of place juxtaposed with the smooth, ageless appearance of his fair skin.
“You’re in momma’s room,” he whispered.
Something about the words and the way he spoke them felt ominous; as if it were a dark secret.
I shivered as I reached up with my good arm, my left arm, and wiped at the tears sliding down my face. “Did you call for help? Is someone coming?”
He glanced at me before looking away again. “No, ma’am. We’re over a hundred miles from town. And I… I ain’t got no phone.”