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He fought a smile. “No. To the wedding.”
I blinked at him. He wasn’t—no. He wasn’t asking me, was he?
Surely not.
“Come with me? Not to the ceremony, just the after party.”
He’s lost his fucking mind.
“Are you insane?” I asked, staring at him. “I don’t want to talk to you, much less be your date to a wedding!”
“Oh, come on. It’s only a couple of hours, and if I go alone, I’m going to have to put up with all my elderly relatives trying to marry me off.”
“Absolutely not.”
“All right, I wasn’t going to bring this up, but…”
Oh, no.
He isn’t going there, is he?
“That doesn’t count!” I jerked my finger in his direction. “Don’t you dare bring that up!”
“You promised me you’d be my date if I ever needed one.”
“We were thirteen! And I liked you then. We were friends. We most definitely are not friends now.”
He shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets, but he wasn’t even trying to hide the smile on his lips. “You promised.”
“I also promised you that we’d get married if we were both single at thirty,” I said dryly. “But that’s not happening either.”
“It’s not?”
“No. I’d rather die old and alone with twenty cats and let them eat me.”
“You have an alarming imagination. Do you know that?”
“You have an alarming audacity to walk in here with a dumbass promise made by two kids and expect me to go to your sister’s wedding with you.”
“I know.” He grinned. “At least I can admit it.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No. You’ve had more than two minutes. You can leave now.”
“Holley…”
I turned back from where I’d started walking away. “No.”
He grinned. “Yes.”
“No.”
“Okay, fine, no.”
“Yes.”
“Ha!” He darted forward until he was right in front of me. “You just said yes.”
I opened my mouth and a big fat freaking nothing came out of it.
I hadn’t, had I?
I had.
I’d said yes, because he’d tricked me into it.
“That’s not fair!” I squeaked. “You tricked me!”
“You still said yes.” He stepped back toward the storeroom door. “No backsies.”
“No backsies?” I followed him through back into the store. “How old are you? Seven? And that doesn’t count!”
“It counts.”
“It does not count!”
“What doesn’t count?” Saylor asked, looking between us. She had a piece of tape stuck to her cheek. Somehow.
Sebastian looked at her. “She said yes to going to my sister’s wedding with me and is now saying she didn’t.”
“You tricked me!” I pointed at him and looked at Saylor. “He tricked me!”
She looked at me, unbothered. Honestly, she was a pink Wednesday Addams.
“Did you say yes?” she asked.
“Yes, but—”
“Then you said yes.”
“But—”
Sebastian tutted. “No buts. You just said you said yes. Looks like you’re stuck with me on Saturday night.”
I stomped my foot against the wooden floor. “This—I didn’t—I don’t… Argh!”
He walked to the counter and tore a piece of paper from the notebook that was there and open, grabbed the pen and scribbled down on it. He picked up the paper and brought it over to me.
“This is my number,” he said, taking my wrist and putting the paper in my palm before folding my fingers over it into a fist. “Text me, and I’ll tell you the details.”
I opened my mouth.
Again, nothing came out.
He winked.
Then he backed up and threw a goodbye to a grinning Saylor, leaving me opening and closing my mouth like a lame little goldfish who was struggling to breathe.
That’s what it felt like.
Struggling to breathe.
There was no way this was happening.
There was no way I was going to go to his sister’s wedding with him.
How the hell had this happened?
“I’m not doing it!” I chased after him, running out onto the freezing cold sidewalk. “Sebastian! I mean it! Sebastian!”
“We’ll see!” He didn’t even turn around, just threw up a hand as he turned the corner and disappeared out of my sight.
I shivered, half from the cold and half from annoyance.
I was going to kill him.
I stormed back into the store and slammed the door behind me. “Thank you so much for your help.”
Saylor beamed at me. “You’re welcome.”
“Ugh!” I crumpled his number up in my fist and collapsed onto the counter.
“I don’t know why you’re so mad,” Saylor said after a moment. “You have Sebastian Stone’s phone number. That’s a good thing.”
“What,” I ground out. “Is good about this?”
“Well, I bet you could put it on eBay and make a shit ton of money.”
“Saylor. Be serious.”
“Charity auction?”
“Saylor.”
She stacked the books for the book club with such force it made me jerk up, and she waved one in my face. “Holley, I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear. I think you’re a giant baby who needs to get over yourself and the past, and if you going to his sister’s wedding with him means you’ll finally talk to him and get answers and obtain some closure for what happened at prom, then that can only be good thing.” She put the pink-wrapped book on top of the stack. “Now, go and take these to Margaret and Bonita or I’m going to have to drink myself to death tonight.”
