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Chapter Eight
Freedom
We’re getting ready in a suite bigger than my apartment. I don’t know how they secured this baby, but kudos to Latham for going all out on the honeymoon suite. The bed in the other room is big enough to comfortably sleep a family of four, much bigger than my postage stamp bed back at home. Not that you’d invite a family of any size to join you in bed, especially on your wedding night, but you get my point.
Marissa tops off my champagne and I catch the sparkle of the diamond on my finger. If anyone has noticed it, they haven’t said, which I’m grateful. Not that I’m embarrassed or upset I’m wearing Samuel’s ring. Oh, no. Just the opposite, actually. But I don’t want what has happened between us to overshadow or cause pain to my bestie. It’s her day, after all. We’re here for her and Latham, to celebrate their love and witness their union in holy matrimony.
“Free, are you about ready?” Harper hollers through the bedroom doorway.
“Thanks,” I say to Marissa as she tops off her own glass and heads toward where Harper is getting ready. “Coming!”
I follow Harper’s younger sister to the bedroom, where I’m stunned silent at the vision of my friend. She’s simply gorgeous in her strapless ivory lace gown that hugs her curves from chest to thigh. It fans out subtly at her knees and cascades around her sexy ivory pumps. Her long, auburn hair hangs in big soft waves down her back, three rhinestone jeweled flowers pinning some of those curls from her face.
“Holy shitballs, Harper. You’re…wow!”
My best friend smiles widely. “You think?” She glances down at her dress, softly touching the lace at her sides.
“Oh, Latham is going to shit a brick when he sees you,” I confirm, making my friend laugh.
“Well, I kinda hope not, but I do hope his reaction is as big as yours.”
“No worries there,” Marissa adds, emptying the champagne bottle into her sister’s glass. “He’ll swallow his tongue.”
“Well, as long as he coughs it up so he can use it later,” Harper says, a sly grin showing over the rim of her champagne glass. “His tongue is one of my favorite attributes.”
“I’m not sure I want to know what I walked in on,” Mary Ann, Harper’s mom, says as she enters the bedroom. “Oh, Harper.” She stops and covers her mouth with her hands as tears brim in her eyes.
“You like?”
Mary Ann approaches her daughter and takes her into her arms, holding her tightly in a hug. “You’re beautiful,” she says, those tears no longer contained. They fall freely, and I admit, they even choke me up a bit.
Mary Ann has always been a surrogate mom to me. The mother I always longed for. My own parents took off when I was in grade school, leaving me in the hands of my maternal grandma. When I became friends with Harper, I sort of adopted her mom as my own. We had sleepovers, ate dinner together at each other’s houses, and essentially spent all of our free time with one another. Through it all, I’ve sat by and watched the dynamics between mother and daughter. Not just with Harper, but with all of her kids. Mary Ann is an extraordinary mother, and I am fortunate to have that in my life.
Their whole family, actually. While I appreciate what my grandma did for me, it was the Grayson family that really made my childhood what it was. From moving around, living in spiritual compounds to finally having a home with a real family. That’s what they mean to me. Not just Harper, but the entire family.
My family.
Mary Ann is wearing a blue pantsuit with nude pumps, and she’s totally hot. Marissa looks a lot like her mom, a bit on the shorter side with dark hair and green eyes, but there’s no denying the relation. Harper, on the other hand, favors her dad’s look. Tall, slender, stunning blue eyes, and gorgeous auburn locks. Plus, throw in the brains. She has a business sense to rival any big corporation in the area, and does it while selling silky nighties.
My bestie is beautiful, inside and out.
And about to marry Latham.
I knew back in school we’d be right here someday. They did everything they could to get under each other’s skin. It was like foreplay. A dance. A seduction that spanned more than a decade. The moment Latham walked into Kiss Me Goodnight, after being gone for ten years, the world finally righted itself. And now, they’re getting married.
I couldn’t be happier for her.
Spinning the unfamiliar object on my ring finger, I debated on whether or not to take it off. It’s foreign on my left hand, considering I haven’t worn a ring since the mood one I sported in high school, but there’s something so very right and…familiar, all the same. It’s like good juju finally settled around me. I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m not about to question it either. That’s why the ring stays on my finger. If someone asks about it? Well, I guess I’ll figure it out then.
“How are you doing?” Mary Ann’s soft voice startles me from my own thoughts.
“Oh,” I reply with an immediate smile. “I’m good.”
She just grins that knowing motherly smile. Like when Harper and I were in high school and skipped PE class to go get milkshakes. Without so much as a phone call, she knew. How? I’ll never know, but she did. “I’m happy you’re here, Freedom. For Harper.”
“Thank you, Mrs. G. Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
That’s when she glances down at my finger as I’m nervously spinning the double rings adorned there. My heart stops. Literally. It just stops doing its only job, beating and pumping blood through my body. I can’t breathe, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to drop dead any second from lack of oxygen to my brain.
