Page 27 of Give In

She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to. The look she gives me is the one that means I love you and thank you and I saw that all at once, and it is worth every bit of the adrenaline currently working its way through my system.

I settle back into my spot. Lizzie tops up my mimosa without being asked.

“So,” Emma says, into the quiet, with the timing of a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing. “Pilar. Do you think you could do something with my hair or is it a lost cause?”

The room exhales and shifts and moves on, the way rooms full of women who have decided to have a beautiful morning will do, and Kiki finishes her mimosa near the window and leaves shortly after without saying much else, and I stand in my bridesmaid dress with my well-behaved hair and my topped-up mimosa and I think that I have never in my life felt quite so much like myself as I do right now in this room with these people.

chapter

twelve

Heath

We’re waiting in the shade for Jana to give us the word to walk down the aisle. My brother appears at my elbow.

“Emma just texted Bram,” he says.

“They’re married. It was bound to happen eventually,” I say.

He snorts.

“Aren’t you supposed to be already sitting? Waiting for the ceremony?”

“Probably, but I thought you’d want some information first.”

“Whatever it is, it can wait.”

He subsides. For approximately ninety seconds.

“Kiki went to the bridal suite this morning,” he says.

I go very still.

“Emma says your girl handled her.” A pause. “Emma also says, and I’m quoting here, that it was one of the most satisfying things she has ever personally witnessed.”

I look at him. He looks back at me with an expression of complete innocence that doesn’t suit his face at all.

“She’s fine,” he says, reading whatever is happening on my face with the accuracy of someone who has been doing it his whole life. “More than fine, from the sounds of it.”

I glance over at my son, who is watching for the wedding planner’s cue like a proverbial hawk. He hasn’t said anything about KiKi this morning which makes me wonder if he knows about the bridal room drama.

During the ceremony itself I do my best to focus on my son and his bride. But my eyes keep locking in on the maid of honor.

She’s standing across from me in her bridesmaid dress, that hugs her voluptuous curves perfectly. Her wild red curls are still a bit wild, though clearly someone has tamed them somewhat today. Her eyes are bright. She’s watching Juniper and Leo with an expression of open, unguarded happiness. She’s clearly lost the battle with her tear ducts because her cheeks are wet. She keeps swiping at them with the back of her wrist when she thinks no one is looking.

She looks beautiful.

She looks like mine.

That last thought arrives without ceremony or qualification. It doesn’t alarm me the way it probably should. It just sits there in my chest like something that has always been true and is only now being acknowledged.

I force my gaze back to my son just in time to hear him say I do in a voice that is completely steady and completely certain. How could I have ever questioned him and his decision to marry? I was being overly cautious. Not anymore.

The reception has been going on for an hour by the time I find a moment to breathe.

Father of the groom, it turns out, is a full-time occupation at the reception. There are toasts and photographs and the couple’s first dance. At one point Leo tried to convince me into a father-son dance, that I am mostly sure was a complete joke on his part.

He did grab me and pull me into a tight bear hug and right before he let go, he’d whispered, “All I’ve ever wanted was for you to be happy, Dad. If Clover makes you happy, then go after her.”