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“Yeah, I know. But she’s guh-good for me.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. She m-makes me stutter.”
“All right, then. Go un-fuck whatever it is you fucked up with her. You have my blessing.”
“Thanks, man.”
They embraced, stiff-armed and awkward, and it occurred to Sean that he’d said Katie’s name out loud a minute ago. Flawlessly.
He said it again. “K-katie. Katie. Not so hard, asshole,” he muttered. “It’s only a name.”
But it was more than that. It was everything.
When they walked back into the boardroom, everyone was staring, but no one spoke up. Not for one endless heartbeat after another.
They were quiet, waiting, and Sean let them wait.
I’m not going to tell you what to do anymore, he thought. Figure it out for yourselves.
Finally, Carol Piaskowski said, “Are you all right, Sean? You don’t seem altogether yourself this morning.”
“I’m guh-good, actually,” he told her. “I’m the m-most m-myself I’ve b-been in a long t-time.”
Chapter Forty-four
He crashed the wedding.
It wasn’t as dramatic as it sounded. By the time the company plane landed in Jamaica and a cab dropped him off at the resort, he had thirty minutes left before the ceremony was supposed to start. It only took him five to walk to the beach and another ten to get the resort security guard in charge of keeping photographers away to check his clipboard and determine that Sean’s name was still on it.
“You were supposed to be here an hour ago,” he chided, and Sean shrugged.
“I g-got held up.”
The guard instructed him to slip through the open-sided reception tent and out to the beach on the other side, where he’d find the Camelot employees arrayed around the perimeter.
It was easy. He nodded a greeting to Eric and Bryce, slipped into a spot at the edge of the assembly, and watched the crowd assemble before his eyes.
Not that it was much of a crowd. Maybe fifty people, many of them with Katie and Caleb’s dark skin and dark hair. Family from Michigan, he guessed. Caleb stood up front beside Jamie Callahan, along with another man who had to be the officiant.
Hidden speakers began playing the wedding march, and the crowd rustled and shifted around in their seats, craning for a better view.
Then Katie walked barefoot along the aisle of sand, her arm through the elbow of a man Sean couldn’t see, because he couldn’t see anything but her.
She wore a tight black dress that left her shoulders bare and puffed out at the knees. Her hair was up in some kind of complicated knot, but a few pieces had already slipped out to lie heavily on her neck. She held a bouquet of tropical flowers, and she smiled all the way down the aisle, looking beautiful and vital and perfect.
The rest of the bridesmaids must have followed her, then Henry as ring-bearer, Ellen the bride, but Sean didn’t notice. He watched Katie’s face, stared at her body, breathed the same air she was breathing, and hoped.
The ceremony was simple. Caleb and Ellen, holding hands before the crowd of well-wishers, surrounded by family and close friends. Plain vows. Caleb’s serious expression the correct counterpoint to Ellen’s open, awestruck face. The exchange of rings, and a kiss that started out hesitant, reverent as a sacrament, but went on and deepened until it became a declaration.
Sean’s focus remained on Katie as she smiled and clutched her clasped hands tight. As she listened, and the smile faded. Her eyes widened and grew glossy, and when she wiped away a tear, her hand trembled.
He’d never seen her so publicly defenseless before, or so beautiful. She wanted this. She wanted the wedding. In a million years, she’d never admit it, but she believed in happily-ever-after, despite everything she’d been through the first time.
He just had to get her to believe in him.
She was looking away from him when she proceeded back down the aisle, laughing at something the groomsman beside her said, and then she was off in the surf, barefoot, her dress clutched in her fists, posing for candid shots with Ellen and Caleb and the rest of the bridal party as the sun sank toward the ocean.
