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1
This was supposedto be the happiest day of Avery Stone’s life, but she felt anything but happy. Her feet weren’t cold; they were frozen, solid pieces of ice.
“I need a sign,” Avery whispered as she closed her eyes and wrapped her fingers around the locket that hung from her neck, which held in it a picture of her grandparents on their wedding day. “I want to do the right thing, Gammy. I just don’t know what that is.”
Today, more than most days, she missed her Gammy. Her grandmother had been the only constant in her life until she passed away when Avery was ten. After that, she moved between distant relatives’ houses. Spending a few months, sometimes a year, on a couch or sharing a room with a second cousin.
Her mother, Blanche Bardot, was a background singer who had toured with some of the biggest names in country and pop music. She dedicated her entire life to her true love, music, which was amazing, but hadn’t left much time or room in her life to raise a daughter. Avery’s father, Arthur Stone, was someone her mom had a brief, passionate affair with while she was on a European tour.
Avery never met the man whose last name she shared. So today, the “man” walking her down the aisle would be her four-and-a-half-year-old son Jacob. She supposed it was fitting since today was only about him. Jacob deserved the family unit that Avery never had. Sure, it had taken her nearly five years to make it to this day. But she hadn’t planned on getting pregnant. That discovery had come as quite a shock to her.
Avery’s stomach rolled with uneasiness as she opened her eyes and saw her reflection. She saw nothing but doubt swimming in the pools of her blue eyes. The woman staring back at her thought there was a chance she was about to make the biggest mistake of her life.
Behind her, hanging on the door of the hotel room, was a beautiful ivory lace and satin Oscar de la Renta wedding dress. The couture gown had been tailored to fit her curves like a glove. The venue was ready. There were over two hundred guests arriving to celebrate the union of two people who Avery was certain weren’t in love with each other.
I can do this, she thought to herself.This is what I’ve always wanted.
Avery’s childhood was not what could be classified as traditional. She’d never had a sense of home or stability. Because of that, she promised herself that if she ever had children, she would give them what she’d never had. A family. She hadn’t planned it to be this way with this man, but that was how her life had turned out.
Five years ago, she’d gone to the doctor because she’d been having headaches, which she thought were related to stress, and ended up leaving with prenatal vitamins. Leave it to her to have the most uncommon symptom of pregnancy. It had been a shock, to say the least, considering she’dneverhad unprotected sex. Birth control had been a high priority for her. But she found out the hard way that no birth control was one hundred percent effective. Jacob was a result of the one percent that wasn’t.
In the past ten years, she’d only been with two men. One was Jacob’s father, Jude, the man she was supposed to marry in twelve hours. The other was Keaton Savage, a man she’d shared a whirlwind, two-week relationship with five years ago. A man who she hadn’t been in contact with since she’d sat on the exam table and found out she was eight weeks pregnant five years ago. A man who she hadn’t stopped thinking about, dreaming about, wondering about in all of those years. A man who, in her weakest, saddest, loneliest, and most selfish moments, she’d wished had been the father of her child.
She knew that made her an awful person. She knew that wasn’t fair to Jude. She didn’t even like to admit those thoughts to herself. But at this moment, on the precipice of such a life-altering day, she was taking a fearless inventory, and she was not proud to admit that it was not painting her in the most favorable light.
Her phone buzzed, interrupting her internal panic attack, aka breakdown. Assuming it was the alarm she’d set, which ultimately she hadn’t needed because she hadn’t been able to sleep a wink, she picked up her phone to silence it when she saw it was a CNN news notification. She clicked on the message, and the headline that she saw sent a rush of emotion coursing through her.
MMA World Champion Keaton Savage to Join the Cast of the Rebooted Reality Dating Show Fairytale Love Filming in His Hometown of Whisper Lake
Avery’s heart and stomach both sank like the Titanic, slowly and painfully, as she scrolled down the page and saw the photos they’d used for the article. The first was a picture she’d seen a thousand times. It was a shot of him winning his third consecutive and final MMA world champion title. Keaton stood in the cage, shirtless, with his tattooed, chiseled arms in the air.
Those arms had cradled her. They’d made her feel more protected and safer than she’d ever felt. They’d made her feel like she was finally home.
Was this her sign?
Was this Gammy’s, or the Universe's, or God’s way of telling her not to go through with this today?
Or was this just a coincidence?
The Google alert was only set up on her phone because the producer ofFairytale Love,Sabrina Denton, was her best friend and the show had shot the first season at a property she owned.
Six years ago, she’d found out that her estranged father had passed away and left her Stone Castle, which had been in his family for generations. Her first thought was that it had to be in the UK, but to her surprise, it was actually located in a small town in the Midwest, Whisper Lake, Illinois.
In a series of fortuitous events, Sabrina had been looking for a location to film the reality show she’d gotten greenlit, and the property turned out to be a perfect fit. They filmedFairytale Loveat Stone Castle five years ago and were about to film its second season starting next week. And now, it seemed, in a cruel twist of fate, the man who she’d pined over and secretly loved was apparently going to be a contestant on the reality TV show. She’d thought he was engaged to his childhood sweetheart, so this news was a shock.
As she scrolled down, reading the article, there were more pictures. Her heart swelled and broke upon seeing his light whiskey eyes, his square jaw, and his deep dimples.
Suddenly, all the cloudy doubts she’d had and all the uncertain fogginess in her brain cleared. She knew she could not do this.
How could she marry one man when she still loved another?
No.She shook her head and tried to ignore the flashing warning signs going off in her brain. She needed to suck it up. Jacob deserved a family.
Marriage didn’t have to be fireworks, friendship, and fun. Marriage was an arrangement. At least it had been for thousands of years before romantic love was brought into the equation. And look how well that had worked out. Over fifty percent of marriages ended in divorce.
And even if it was based on love, she did love Jude as a person. She respected and admired his talents for running a business, and he had a charisma and appeal that could not be denied. He walked into a room, and people took notice. They gravitated toward him. So what if they rarely saw each other and their sex life was nonexistent? People had bigger problems than that.
Taking a deep breath, she told herself this was the right thing.
