Did he just snort?
He dished out another haughty smile. “Let’s not forget the last time you tried to beat me. I seem to remember that being somewhat of an . . .” He twirled me across the floor and drew me back in until I almost bumped him in the face. “. . . Embarrassing moment for you.”
What I would’ve given to throw a basketball at his gut right about then. I pitched my nose in the air and looked away from him. “You had an unfair advantage.”
He drew me even closer. “You mean, like now?”
Ms. Fairy Queen floated by us on another celestial sweep around the room. “Lovely hold. Very nice.”
The couple to our right obscured her behind them. I stomped on A. J.’s foot while I had the chance. “Sorry.” I wrenched my shoulders in the air. “Slipped.”
The music slowed to an instrumental close. I curtseyed and returned the same impish smile following A. J.’s bow.
He applauded my successful completion of the dance and leaned forward. “See? You can do it. All you need is a little distraction.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. He’d egged me on because he knew it’d keep my mind off the moves. After everything, he was still rescuing me when I needed it.
He spun past me on his way toward the bag he’d tossed in the corner of the room when he’d first arrived. Instead of stopping in the bathroom to change, he tossed the bag over his shoulder and headed for the exit. “It’s been fun,” he said, “but I need to get going. I have a date I can’t miss.”
“A date?”
He wheeled around, chuckling with something resembling flattery. “Don’t sound so surprised, Rosy.”
“I’m not.” In fact, I was relieved. Happy that he’d moved on. That was all I’d ever wanted for him. Happiness.
He reached behind him for the door handle. “I’m taking Andre to a basketball game tonight. Peace offering.” With a wink to match his maddening grin, he disappeared through the door.
A breeze snuck a pair of furled, brown maple leaves inside before the door closed. The cool air blew through my hair and fanned the instructor’s flowy pants as she sailed over to bring Jaycee her MP3 player.
She stopped between us, followed my gaze to the back of the door, and placed her delicate hand on my forearm. “You two make a lovely dance couple. But if I may offer a little piece of advice.” She leaned in close enough to whisper as if trying to spare me from embarrassment. “Don’t be afraid to let him lead.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed until no sound came out, and the lady’s bewildered expression forced me to bite my tongue.
Jaycee grabbed my arm and steered me in the opposite direction. “Sorry,” she said to the instructor. “The stress is starting to make us all a little delirious.”
I’d regained my composure by the time we made it to the opposite wall. “Sorry, Jae. Her comment . . . the irony . . .”
“Mm hmm,” Jaycee mumbled through a tight-lipped smile. “I think it’s about time you lose those heels. They’re starting to affect your mind.” She tossed me a water bottle and my purse. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here. Starbucks is calling.”
Nothing like a venti chai tonic to put things back in perspective. Jaycee and I were still laughing as we strode up the sidewalk to our apartment, arm in arm. If nothing else, the dance would most certainly end up being entertaining.
Jake met us midway to the door and rubbed his snout under my hand as Riley rose from the porch. “How’d it go?”
I looked down at my sore feet. “Um . . . you mean before or after we had to restart the dance for the hundredth time?”
“She was great. Don’t let her fool you.” Jaycee slanted me a glance. “Just a little stubborn.”
Riley strolled toward us. “Em? Stubborn?”
I shook my head at both of them. “Ha. Ha.”
Expression sobering, he squatted and rustled Jake’s ears. Was he thinking about me dancing with A. J.?
Jaycee looked from Riley to me and jutted her coffee cup toward the door. “I’m going to go get out of these clothes. Think I might hit the gym for a bit.” She breezed past Riley and jogged up to the door with a level of energy that should’ve been zapped after that dance lesson.
The gym? Seriously? Maybe I needed to give the whole coffee buzz thing a try.
Riley stood and tucked his hands in his pockets. Jake lay down beside him and rested his chin over his paws. “Hope you don’t mind me waiting for you.”
“Of course not. But first things first.” I grabbed his arm for balance and stripped off one shoe at a time. “This dance might not be a total disaster if I can manage to stay on my feet.”
He smiled. “Trust me. No one’s going to be looking at your feet.”
I waved off his compliment. “You haven’t even seen my dress yet.”
“I wasn’t talking about your dress.”
Good thing the concrete was freezing. With any luck, the cold seeping into the soles of my feet would drain the heat crawling up my neck. Would we ever reach a point where he’d stop making me blush?
Riley laughed at my expression. “You still have no idea how easily you capture people’s hearts, do you?”
“I’m pretty sure Jaycee will be the one to steal the show on her wedding day.”
“Not for me,” he said without so much as a pause. “Though, seeing her in white might just make me wonder if I’m ever gonna get you in a wedding dress.”
“Is that right?”
He inched closer. “Mm hmm.”
“Mr. Calm and Collected isn’t getting anxious, is he?”
He feigned a look of innocence. “Me? No. I mean, if you don’t count the times when I see you.” He traced his hand down my arm to my fingers. “Or when I hear your voice,” he said while linking both my arms around his back. “Or when I’m close enough to feel your heartbeat.” He shrugged. “Other than that, I’m completely fine.”
“Mm, yes, well, that does pose a problem, doesn’t it?”
“The question is, what should we do about it?”
I scrunched my lips to the side. “We could ditch every reason we have for waiting and fly to Vegas right now.”
He craned his head back. “You’re really trying to test the limits of my perseverance, aren’t you?”
Like he didn’t test mine every single time he looked at me.
His cell rang. He barely tipped it out of his pocket and dismissed the call.
It killed me to watch him ignore calls that were probably far more important than he let on. “Any update on rescheduling the tour?”
“Brett’s working on it,” he said like it was a passing comment about the weather instead of his career.
I backed up. “Riley, please—”
“You know what I’ve been thinking? Why not daydream?”
“Excuse me?”
His fingertips found mine again. “Instead of worrying about all the question marks, why not view them as a chance to dream about the future?” He motioned toward the sky. “Kinda like cloud chasing.”
His eyes brought me back to the first day we spent on the sports field when I’d told him how I used to drag Dad outside to see the shapes in the clouds. From the beginning, he’d made it so easy to open up to him. And had gotten even better at being able to sidetrack me.
He expanded his smile until I returned it. “C’mon, top choice for a honeymoon?”
“Alaska.”
“That was a quick answer.”
“Always wanted to go. All that wide-open space. Pristine landscape.” I shrugged. “My love of the outdoors, I guess.”
He studied me. “Girl after my own heart. Top place to live?”
“Isn’t that a given?”
His forehead pinched, gaze dropping. “We don’t have to move to Nashville. The center . . .”
Couldn’t blame him for not finishing. My own voice faltered at the thought.
Jake’s collar jingled as he snapped his head toward a squirrel scurrying across the stree
t. I squatted to rub his ears, grateful for the distraction. He rolled onto his back and arched his belly for me to pet instead.
“Saying goodbye won’t be easy. But my life’s with you.” I stared absently at the pavement. As much as I wanted to start that life, I wasn’t ready to think about the one I’d be leaving behind.
I pushed off the ground, dragged my hand around Riley’s waistline as I passed, and moseyed up the walkway. Jake lumbered up and trotted after me. “What if we daydream about the wedding part instead?”
“We can start with our vows. You want to write them together?”
Shoulders lifted, I teetered on the balls of my feet. “Actually, I want to be surprised.”
His face went blank. “Sure you didn’t trade places with my fiancée on the way over?”
“What?” I splayed my hands to my sides.
He bent down to pick up my heels and met me at the stoop. “I’m just a little shocked.” He brushed back a strand of my hair that had blown horizontally in the wind. “You—the girl who bruised my arm over the whole Biggie Rey surprise?”
“Oh, stop. I didn’t bruise you. And this is different. We can coordinate some, but I want to hear you say them for the first time when we’re standing at the altar. It means more to me that way. I can’t explain it.”
He brandished our favorite lawyer-look. “So, does that mean I can throw in some other surprises, and you won’t be upset?”
I flaunted the look right back. “Maybe.”
He laughed. “Now, there’s the girl I know.”
“What do you mean by surprise, exactly?”
He folded his arms and left my heels dangling from his hand. “That kind of defeats the purpose of it being a surprise, doesn’t it?”
“You’re impossible sometimes, you know that?”
“And you’re still adorable when you’re flustered.”
I strained to keep from mirroring his smile. Right. Caving, I turned and sat on the porch. “I got an email from Melody today.”
“Really?” He joined me on the stoop, set my shoes to the side, and rubbed Jake’s head.
I hugged my knees to my chest and raised my feet off the cold concrete. “She already has several songs picked out for us.”
“I bet.”
“Actually,” I said, “they’re pretty good. She’s a natural at this sort of thing.”
“I don’t doubt it. My whole family lives and breathes music.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It can be.” He stared out in front of us.
A fragment of the mark where the wolf had bitten his arm poked out from behind his cuff. I pushed up his sleeve.
“It’ll probably leave a scar,” he said.
It couldn’t be worse than the one his dad’s words had left. Even if it wasn’t visible.
I tugged his sleeve back down and laced my fingers through his. “You know, I still want to wait for your dad’s blessing on the wedding. It’s important for him to be there . . . voluntarily.” I leaned into his shoulder. “I’m not giving up hope.”
“That’s why I love you.” He kissed my temple. “But honestly, Em, we can’t wait forever.”
“I know.” Exhaling, I searched for a way to hold on and let go at the same time. “After graduation.” I faced him. “Regardless what else happens, let’s set the date for June.” Jaycee’d be itching to plan another ceremony by then. Austin should be able to walk again. And that’d still leave enough time for his dad to come around, wouldn’t it?
“Deal.” Riley held out my shoes. “But how about we tackle one wedding at a time.”
I reluctantly took my heels back and sighed. “Deal.”
chapter twenty-two
Time
My phone rang right as I left my operations management class. Hands full, I swung my backpack around and squatted to the floor. Thank goodness, the wall was there. I caught my balance and massaged my hamstring while fishing for my cell. After five dance rehearsals over the last two weeks, my muscles should’ve been used to stretching.
I clamped my phone to my ear with my shoulder, shoved my midterm review notes in my book bag, and zipped it up. “Hello.”
“Your brother turns gimp, and you decide not to call him anymore?” Austin said with a healthy dose of his usual humor.
I pushed up on my knees. “Sorry. It’s been kinda crazy around here. I’m barely keeping my head on straight.”
“You’re not killing yourself over this grant thing, are you?”
Nothing like a big brother’s overprotective instincts kicking in.
“Just waiting.” And praying. “We’re doing what we can in the meantime.” I backed open the door and squinted at the glare rippling off the sidewalk. Hard to believe we’d made it to March already. “The kids raised close to seven hundred dollars through this service project we did. And we got something like five K from a benefit concert.”
I skidded beside one of the stone benches along the walkway. “Oh my God, Aust. I can’t believe I forgot to tell you. The sales from Dee’s drawings. Ms. Mendierez said they totaled almost two thousand dollars.”
“I’m not surprised. My boy Rob said they’d probably go for a decent price.”
That was for sure.
A breeze coursed up the walkway and found every tiny hole in my sweater. I resituated my backpack and kept trekking across the campus. “Thanks for making that connection, by the way. It was a huge help. You should see the renovations we’re doing to the basketball court. The kids are stoked. Actually, the adults too. Seeing the kind of stuff that’s possible has got this whole dreamer-buzz-thing stirring around that place. I don’t know how to describe it.”
Austin laughed.
Gimp or not, he was definitely getting a good pillow swat the next time I saw him. “I’m serious.”
“I know. It’s just funny how dead on Dad was sometimes?”
“What are you talking about?” I stopped along the bridge and folded my arms over the railing.
“He told me you’d end up running your own organization one day.”
Really? “I’m only helping out—”
“You’re leading more than you realize,” he said with Dad’s perfect intonation.
The creek ran downstream, lapping over the rocks the same way memories of Dad collected around my heart. “He always saw a world of dreams, didn’t he?”
“He just saw what we couldn’t.”
And loaned his faith to us until we could.
“Matthews, you ready to roll?” someone in the background called.
“One sec,” Austin answered. “Em, let me go. I gotta get some P. T. in if I’m gonna be ready in time for your wedding.”
Even though we’d finally set a date, something still felt unsettled. I didn’t want to get into that right now. “Love ya, Aust.”
“You too. Later.”
Another damp breeze swam off the gorge and spurred me the rest of the way to my apartment. Inside, I hunched against the back of the door as I’d done a thousand times over the last year and a half. Jaycee sat curled up in her usual corner of the couch, surrounded by a bundle of books. It should’ve filed right in with countless other moments, but thinking about Dad had stirred up a reminder of what I was losing too fast.
Time.
Jaycee tapped the end of a gnawed-off pencil on her notepad without peeking up to say hi.
I kicked off my shoes and flopped onto the chair across from the couch. Still, not even a glance my way. “Everything all right?”
She dropped her pencil and glared at me.
Maybe I should’ve accepted the silence instead of interrupting it.
“All right?” She was up and pacing in front of the couch before I had time to haul my feet into the chair and out of her path.
“If you equate all right with keeping my head on by a thread of sanity, then, yeah, I’m super.” She snatched a sheet from a laundry basket of clean clothes on the coffee table. “They should really t
each a class here on how to fold a fitted sheet. Practical. Isn’t that what an education is supposed to be?”
I couldn’t help it. Laughing was probably the most inappropriate response, but seeing her this frazzled made it impossible to hold it in.
Her expression contorted from stunned to offended to amused in the short time it took her to hurl the balled-up sheet at my head.
She fell back onto the couch, laughing too. “Sorry. I’m losing my mind. I mean, I love student teaching, and I’m not at all second-guessing wanting to be a teacher. It’s just that the timing couldn’t be worse with all the wedding planning I’m doing right now.” She buried her face in a throw pillow. “I feel like my thoughts are running in a hundred different directions.”
“Welcome to my perpetual state of existence.” I scooted to the edge of the chair. “I’m sure it’s nothing a girls’ night out and Starbucks can’t remedy.”
Above the top of the pillow, Jaycee’s eyes widened like a kid who’d been handed the world’s largest ice cream cone but then shrank when she looked back at the pile of books on the couch. “I’ll have to take a rain check. But you have no idea how badly I could use Starbucks right now.”
“I might have a slight idea,” I said more to myself. I shoved my own tangled thoughts aside, knowing she needed more than just coffee. She needed her best friend. I sat beside her and removed the books and papers from the space between us, never so glad she didn’t have the additional pressure of planning my wedding right now as well. At least that was a plus.
She rested her head on my shoulder.
“I know moving up the date has kicked your stress level into high gear, but if anyone’s organized enough to pull it off, it’s you.”
“Thanks.” She lifted her head and drew the pillow in her lap even tighter. “Everything’s actually coming together pretty smoothly. My mom’s been a huge help. I think it’s been a good distraction for her.”
“See, you have a lot of people ready to help make this day perfect for you. Don’t worry.”
Jaycee towed one leg onto the couch and dragged the eraser side of the pencil in a sporadic pattern along her calf. “There’s more to be nervous about than the ceremony.”
Hope Unbroken (Unveiled Series Book 3) Page 15