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Chapter EighteenIan relaxed in the passenger seat of Snow’s Mercedes as they cut through downtown Cincinnati on the way back to Rialto. It was one of Snow’s rare days off from the hospital, and he’d talked Ian into joining him for a meeting with an actual wedding planner.
Snow was finally willing to admit that he couldn’t plan this wedding on his own, which only made sense. He and Jude worked some long and crazy hours. Neither of them had time to track down and try out various vendors for all the things they needed to make a wedding happen. And it was perfectly clear that Ian didn’t have the time to deal with organizing everything for him.
Just the memory of sitting down with that poor woman as she tried to get Snow to answer her very reasonable questions was enough to make him squirm uncomfortably in his seat. The grumpy doctor had been unwilling to answer even the simplest of questions. Season of the planned wedding? Estimated number of attendants? Formal or informal?
Nope. Snow gave her nothing to work with. She’d been stuck showing him endless photos of other weddings she’d helped to pull together, both big and lavish and small and adorable. If Ian hadn’t loved planning his own wedding so much, he would have happily handed it over to Kate. She freaking knew her stuff.
But Snow gave her some noncommittal responses and shuffled out, claiming to want to discuss it with his fiancé.
“Can I ask you a question and have you give me a seriously honest answer?” Ian said, breaking the silence as they sat at a red light.
“Of course. I’d never lie to you,” Snow immediately replied. He even sounded hurt by the implication that Ian thought he’d lie to him.
But Ian was more concerned with Snow lying to himself.
“Do you want to get married?”
Snow jerked in his seat, twisting a little to look over at Ian before looking back out the windshield. His hands tightened reflexively on the steering wheel. “What? Of course I want to get married. I love Jude. I want to spend the rest of my life with him.”
“I’m not doubting that you love and want to be with him forever. I’m asking if you want to actually do the marriage thing.”
Snow opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He closed it again and expelled a long breath before shoving one hand through his hair and slumping in his chair. “I have never had trouble making decisions until this wedding thing. I love Jude. I want to be with him forever. And I want to make it legal and binding. I want to be his husband.”
“Then what’s getting you hung up?”
“The actual wedding part.” He glanced over at Ian, his smile more than a little self-deprecating. “When have you ever known me to plan anything?”
Ian smirked back and gave a shake of his head while Snow pressed on the gas after the light turned green. “Okay, you’ve got a point there, but that’s why there are wedding planners. To help narrow things down and handle all the different vendors you need.”
“But they still need me to make decisions and…I can’t. I think of Lucas’s wedding—”
“You can’t compare any wedding to Lucas’s wedding.”
“I know. It was amazing.”
A ball of pride burned brightly in Ian’s chest at Snow’s words. He’d worked hard to pull Lucas and Andrei’s wedding together. And yeah, it had been a stunning event.
“But that’s Lucas,” Snow continued. “It was more than a wedding for him. He was making a statement to the world. Did you know that one of those celebrity gossip TV shows carried photos from that wedding? A gay wedding was making headline news because that’s what Lucas wanted.”
Ian had heard about it. Even picked up a few of the magazines that carried pictures of the wedding just to read what they’d said about it. The praise had been so high that for just a moment, he’d considered opening his own wedding planning business, but he knew a large part of what made the organization of Lucas and Andrei’s so successful was that he loved both men so much. He also chucked the idea because it would take him away from his Rialto too often.
“Even your wedding was a statement.”
Snow’s words shocked him, and he blinked at his friend. “You think?”
A smile lifted Snow’s lips and he continued. “Oh, yeah. There was an understated grace and elegance, which is so you, but also strength. Two of the appetizers that were served were the same things you made that first night we met you at Jagger’s.”
Ian’s hand tightened on the door armrest. It took him a moment to ask, “You noticed?” around the lump in his throat.
“Yes. And so did Rowe and Lucas.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because we didn’t need to. You were taking them back, reclaiming the last things that Jagger stole from you. We were so damn proud of you.”
