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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ETHAN
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The guests of the weddingall smiled at me as I stood on the small stage holding the microphone. My best man’s speech had caused laughter in all the right places and a solid look of horror from Tim when I’d told the childhood story of his phase of dressing up like a girl and pretending to kiss himself in the mirror for practice. And now that my speech was coming to an end, I turned to look at the happy couple.
“I’ll never forget the night Tim called me to tell me that he’d met ‘the one.’” I pointed at Tami. “That’s right, Tami. He knew the very first night that he’d met you that you were the only one for him. When he called me, he was so giddy, so excited, that I thought he was drunk. But it turns out he was just drunk on his feelings for you.”
Her eyes welled up as she glanced at Tim.
“I’ve known my brother for, well, ever, since he was there the day I was born, and never in our lives had he uttered those words before. It took just one night, one laugh, one look, and he was done. Your journey to right here, to this wedding, had already begun.”
My gaze drifted from Tim and Tami and slid onto Ivy. She smiled at me, and that familiar thumping of my heart started up again.
“My mother reminded me yesterday that she knew with my father, the way Tim knew with Tami. It seems our family has a long history of recognizing their soulmates almost instantly.”
As I said those words, I couldn’t unlock my gaze from Ivy’s. That same connection my mother and Tim had spoken of when they’d met their match crackled between us.
“And how lucky were they that they trusted those feelings and didn’t fight against them. They didn’t say it’s impossible to fall in love so fast. They didn’t rationalize away the feelings and shove them away. No. They acted on them. They followed them. They threw themselves headfirst off the cliff and trusted that the love of their life was waiting to catch them at the bottom. And as you can see, since we are sitting here at Tim’s wedding, and my brothers and I exist because my mother did it too, they were right. They knew. Instantly. And after seeing the love between my parents only grow each year, I can safely say Tim and Tami are going to have a long, happy marriage together, growing into the perfect couple they were fated to be.”
The guests awed, and I caught Tim wiping his eyes from my peripheral vision. But I didn’t look at him directly. I couldn’t. As I talked about soul mates and recognizing the love of your life instantly, I couldn’t drag my eyes away from Ivy.
That’s what she was to me. My soul mate. My other half. In the deepest part of my soul, I knew that my whole life had been one journey bringing me straight to her. I let myself get lost in her sparkling eyes, then realized I’d stopped speaking completely. Quickly, I cleared my throat.
“So, here’s to the happy couple. And I hope he’s a good kisser, Tami. He better be after all that practice he had with the mirror.”
The guests all broke into laughter as I lifted my glass. “To Tim and Tami!”
Everyone echoed my sentiment as I took a swig from my champagne glass, my gaze still locked onto Ivy. She clapped along with the other guests, and her radiant smile warmed me straight down to my toes. She set my soul on fire in a way that consumed me, and as my mother had always said, “When you know, you know.”
And I knew. Without any fraction of a doubt, if ever there was a woman on this planet who I could spend the rest of my life with, it was Ivy. It felt irrational and insane to be thinking such things, especially about a girl I’d met less than a week ago, but my feelings for her were powerful and primal, and try as I might, I couldn’t convince myself to feel any other way about her.
Ivy was the one.
“Nice speech,” Jake said as he clapped me on the back.
“Thanks, man.”
“Yeah. Well done,” Matt agreed as he stepped to my other side. “It’s extra impressive the way you went on and on about finding the one and spending your life with someone since we know how youreallyfeel about that subject.” He snorted.
I faked a laugh. “Yeah. Relationships suck. Yuck.”
Jake furrowed his brow. “Whoa. What was that?”
“What was what?”
“You just lied, man. I’ve known you for years, and I know when you’re lying. You just lied. What gives?”
I pressed a hand to my tuxedo-clad chest. “Me? I didn’t lie. Nope.” My gaze drifted to Ivy, and the look on my face must have given me away.
“Whoa!” Matt stepped back. “Dude. You really like this girl for real! Like, not just in a hook-up kind of way. In the ‘marry me and have my babies’ kinda way!”
“I do not!” I argued back, but even I wouldn’t have believed it with the half-assed way I spit the words out.
Jake and Matt looked at each other, then back at me.
“Whoa.” Jake rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Does she know?”
