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“So,” I said, lying back on my grandparents’ bed. I pushed someone’s puffy coat away from me. “If Jamie moves to Indy, what does that mean for you?”
“I’m trying not to think about life without Jamie, to be honest. To go from seeing her every day to…” Her voice trailed off.
“It’ll be an adjustment. But we could visit her a lot, you know.” I swallowed, realizing a second too late I was accidentally making long-term plans with Kendall again. Between that and the fact I’d almost uttered the L-word twice now, I was probably on the verge of scaring her off. Pump the brakes, Mason, I told myself. I didn’t want to spook her.
“I guess I’m lucky it’s just an hour drive. You said your sister lives six hours away, right?”
“And that’s not far enough,” I joked. “She’s giving me hell today. Her and all my cousins. Except Owen, of course—he always leaves me alone.”
Kendall was silent for a moment. “I think I just realized for the first time that spending holidays with you someday means spending them with Sarah and Owen, too.”
I chewed on my bottom lip. “Yeah, but that’s a good thing, right?”
“Of course. They’d be like… family.”
That last word sent a warmth throughout my entire body. There I was worrying about scaring her away with my nonchalant mentions of a future together, and she was using a word like “family.” That felt like a commitment. Kendall quickly laughed it off, though, saying, “Anyway, I need to go. I guess I won’t see you until the wedding, right?”
“I’ll be the hottest guy up on that altar.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
I grinned. “Bye, Kendall.”
**
Forty minutes from Woodvale, nestled between rolling hills and a tranquil pond, stood the White Pine Pavilion, a building that tried desperately to appear rustic despite being built within the last five years. Its enormous windows offered a panoramic view of the orange and red foliage down below, and I could understand why Owen and Sarah chose this location for their wedding.
The rehearsal dinner on Friday night was surprisingly casual, with a catered meal from a local barbecue place and plenty of beer to go around. The rehearsal itself was a cause of stress for Sarah, who was determined to get the timing of the procession just right. We walked through it no less than five times, with Jake and Xander getting rowdier by the minute. “Just to be clear, nobody’s going to be carrying a beer down the aisle at the actual ceremony,” Sarah warned my eldest cousin.
“Wanna bet?” Jake asked her, taking a swig as he linked arms with Sarah’s sister.
Owen laughed until he saw the look on his fiancée’s face. “Knock it off, Jake.”
The second Sarah announced we’d nailed the procession, everyone scattered across the venue—putting together the table decorations or going back to the buffet for seconds. After helping my uncle carry an arch into the venue, I spotted Owen standing on the balcony outside by himself. He was staring down at the pond below with his hands in his pockets, and he looked lost in thought.
“I’ll be back in a sec,” I announced, slipping out the sliding doors.
“Hey, cousin,” Owen said, angling his body toward me as I joined him at the railing.
“You okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah. Just soaking it in.”
“This is the last night you’ll go to bed as an unmarried man. How you feelin’ about that?”
Owen stared down at the ground below, a smile stretching across his face. “If you would’ve told me two years ago that this is what I’d be doing, I wouldn’t have believed you. Feels like winning the lottery. Tomorrow, I marry my best friend—and then it’s off to Cancun for a week. And when I return, I get to start working alongside my baby cousin.”
I decided to let the inclusion of the word “baby” slide, simply returning Owen’s smile.
“I feel like my happiness is almost maxed out,” he continued. “There’s only one thing that could make this better, but I might be waiting a while for that.”
My smile faded as I studied Owen’s face, observing the crinkle between his eyebrows. As happy as he was, he still felt like there was something missing. I wished like hell there was something I could do about that. “It’s going to happen for you, man. Your story’s not over yet.”
He just nodded. We stood at the edge of the balcony in silence for a few moments, watching a couple of mallard ducks waddle around the bank of the pond below. Laughter echoed behind us, where the rest of the wedding party was getting less sober by the second.
And in the spirit of confessing our innermost thoughts, I turned to Owen and blurted, “I’m in love with Kendall Devin.”
His eyes shot my direction. “Damn. I didn’t know it was that serious.”
