Read Crushes to WHAT Online Free by Storm Sterling

Poem and I roll our eyes in tandem. “Drama queen,” we say.

“This drama queen is going to be the reason you make it to your wedding on time,” he grunts. “Assuming you’re all finally ready? Wolfe’s outside waiting with his van, and I have room in the truck for a couple of you, too. Emerson, Patrick, Dad, and Sterne are already at the courthouse waiting. Lotta waiting going on, you’ll notice, meaning we don’t have time for you to have nice moments. Save them for your second wedding. It’s to the same guy, and all the same people will be around. Lots of opportunity then.”

“Uncle Fox is being cranky like Miss Eris,” Amia observes. “Auntie Poem, are you going to threaten his life, too?”

The whole room laughs, save Fox and Eris. Then Poem does threaten Fox’s life as we follow him outside to our noble steeds, which take us to my first wedding.

And, in the end, my favorite wedding, because it’s the one that ties me to Emerson forever… and introduces the ability to bring years of fantasies to reality, swoony and spicy alike.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

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Oh, look, a wedding!

Almond

October’s courthouse generously allows us the use of the sole courtroom housed within its walls for the short, but sweet wedding ceremony. Emerson and I stand before Judge Banner while our families fill out the first row of benches behind the half wall separating the spectator space from the fancy, serious, law portion of the room.

A tiny silver hammer crossed over an equally tiny pair of scissors winks at me from the lapel of Emerson’s dark, seriously hot suit. When we arrived, he told me he’d had both the suit and the pin since he knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Considering the suit has to be custom to fit a man of his breadth and width, and that pin is absolutely custom as well… To think that I believed I was the only one crushing while he was planning out our entire futures together and treating that future as not a possibility, but a foregone conclusion.

I spared a few moments to greet the other well-dressed men in our entourage when we arrived, though tearing my eyes from my soon husband wasn’t a pleasant experience. Where Emerson wears a black so dark it could be the new moon sky, our fathers and my brothers wear navy suits—Sterne included. We’re a dapper group altogether, but I don’t think it’s bias alone that leads me to believe Emerson the best of us all.

Beyond his tailored suit, he’s trimmed his beard and braided his hair into a neat bun instead of the messy one he usually dons. I’ve never seen him so polished, and if you had asked me before, I wouldn’t have guessed that I’d like it just as much as I do his normal rough exterior.

I do, though. I really, really do.

While Judge Banner drones, I consider tossing our vows to the wind in favor of finding out what kissing Emerson with a quarter-inch less beard would feel like…

Will he like my pumpkin lip gloss? It’s not as flavored as the chapstick option I had, but I wanted to see proof of our connection lingering on his lips even after we part.

Are courtroom ceremonies supposed to last this long? It’s been at least thirty seconds since we got up here. Surely that’s long enough to join two people for an eternity. It’s simple. You ask if they want to be married, they say yes, you tell them to kiss, and boom, bam. You have a wedding. Maybe when this is over I’ll give Judge Banner a lesson on the subject.

Maybe while it’s happening, I’ll kiss my should-already-be husband to give the honorable judge a little hint hint, nudge nudge, you’re taking too long.

Emerson’s lips twitch, and my eyes shoot up to see why.

His chestnut gaze catches mine, sparkling and amused. “It’s your line,” he says. “If you’d be so generous as to pause your fantasizing to give me an ‘I do’?”