Page 12 of Bossy Bride: Emma and Jesse

I get to drive home. One of the perks of being sober.

But I’m still drunk. I’m drunk on her.

My Emma.

And when we get back to our apartment, we drop the car off with the valet and I hold her hand all the way up to the penthouse.

We share this place now. It’s ours.

But when we walk inside, I glance at the wall of windows just before Emma flicks on the lights, and see the Bossy. All lit up for Christmas in a pattern of gold that makes it look like a beacon.

Is someone living on my floor now? Did Chek get all our stuff? Will I ever go back there? Or is that place a part of my past now?

“Are you coming?”

I turn and look at Emma. Her head is tilted to the side a little, like she has a question for me.

“No,” I say, walking over to her and taking her hand. Then I look down into her eyes and say, “I’m already here.”

I have the craziest dream.

Like seriously, insane dream.

We’re all there. All of us. Johnny and Megan. Joey, and Huck, and Wald, and Brooke. Emma and me. Mila and Diego. Hannah and what’s-his-face. Natalie and the two guys from the party, even though those guys are just her current flavor of the month and don’t really belong. Dreams are weird like that.

For some reason we’re at the Kane estate. Charlotte is there too, even though Johnny told us that she’s dead. I don’t know why we’re up at the Kane estate. I have only been up there once, and that was recent. I rode up with Joey to pick up Maisy for one of his father weekends when Huck and Wald were out of town on business and Brooke was at work.

It was a nice drive up, I guess. But then the guard at the gate said he knew me. There was this weird conversation with him. We went to school together. I swear to God, I have no recollection of that dude.

But anyway. He was there. The guard. And we were at the Kane estate. All of us.

There was some kind of weird ceremony. Not the money-making one that Joey described after that weird shit-show went down earlier in the year, but something else.

A wedding, I think it was.

Except we were all getting married. Only not to each other. Like, I wasn’t marrying Emma, and Johnny wasn’t marrying Megan, and Joey and the guys weren’t marrying Brooke.

We were all marrying something else.

The Way, I think.

I think it was a dream about being married to the Way.

A subconscious message that this happiness we’ve found is just an illusion.

That we’ll never break free.

I wake up in the middle of the night sweating and throw the covers off me. Emma is on her stomach, snoring softly, the light from the city outside illuminating her dark hair with bits of gold and red.

And I don’t know, but… I can’t shake this feeling that the great time we just had at the holiday party is just an illusion.

I swing my legs out of bed, walk down the hallway, and open the door of the fridge. White light spills out past the door and I just stare into it. And come to a realization.

I need to marry her. Like now. Like now.

I don’t want to wait until spring.

But I can’t marry her now. We’ve got plans. Hell, in a few hours we’ll be on the jet to Key West and by dinner tomorrow night we’ll be completely wrapped up in Christmas preparations.