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“There’s a chance they found Andy’s body,” Luke says.
“I’m on my way.”
Thirty
Lauren
“You look stunning,”I tell Stella when she stands to show off her wedding dress to me as well as the other bridesmaids and my mother.
Sure, I saw it months ago when we flew out to LA to meet with her designer, but the wedding-day glow makes it even more breathtaking. It was custom-made to accentuate her curves. The sleeves are lace, the style is fit like a mermaid, and the train is short. It’s classy yet casual.
Her dark hair is down in curls with a crystal headband on the crown.
Hudson hit the wife lottery with her, although she says the same about him. Theircoworker with benefitsrelationship ended with them getting married. No-commitment promises always end up causing you to fall harder and faster.
No commitment is a way for us to get what we want when we’re not strong enough to let our emotions talk. So, you agree to sex with no strings, but everyone knows sex doesn’t come without complications.
Hudson and Stella’s relationship is ending up in marriage. Willow and Dallas’s sex ended up with a baby and a relationship. You penetrate the person in more ways than one. No matter what anyone says, when you have sex, you give a part of yourself to the other person.
“Thank you,” Stella says. “Hudson invited Gage, by the way.”
I scrunch my face up. “What? I thought you supported my decision that Gage was no longer a word to be said in my presence.”
“To be honest, I hardly know the guy, but Hudson went to his work and asked him to come.”
Gage has been Voldemort in the Barnes family since we ended thingsagain.I don’t want to hear his name. Don’t want to think about him. Nothing.
Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do to Stella or Hudson today. You can’t exactly smack your brother on his wedding day. It’ll fuck up his gelled hair.
“Why would he have done that? I told him we weren’t on speaking terms. It’d be a major buzzkill for you to walk down the aisle at the sound of our arguing.”
She sighs. “He identifies with the situation. Your brother and I had a hard time giving in to each other at first. We’re both stubborn. If we had never admitted our wrongs, we wouldn’t be here today.”
* * *
The wedding was beautiful.
Small and intimate in my parents’ expansive backyard, which surprised me, given Stella’s celebrity roots. The only people present who’d graced the covers of magazines were her castmates and her supermodel sister.
The bride and groom had their first dance, and the bouquet was thrown. And, if you think I went for that thing, you’re absolutely wrong.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t shove Willow to the front of the group and then jump up and down in celebration when she caught it. She and Dallas need to tie the knot.
This family deserves another fairy tale since mine is nothing butNightmare on Elm Street–worthy.
I take another sip of my champagne, hoping it moves me into positive vibes, but something about weddings brings out the PDA craze in couples. All it does is remind me of how much I want to see Gage and smack him with some PDA.
I’m not sure which loss was the worse—the one when I was young and naive or the one when I was old enough to know better but couldn’t break another man’s heart. His dad’s health was deteriorating. My conscience couldn’t let me reveal our secret now.
I lick the buttercream frosting off my fork and am washing it down with strawberry champagne when Amos comes barreling toward me, looking frantic and carrying his oxygen tank behind him.
I jump out of my seat and sprint his way, meeting him in front of my parents’ house.
“Amos,” I say, grabbing his arm to make sure he’s stable, “what’s going on?”
He bends down at the waist to catch his breath. “You need …”Gasp.“He needs …”Gasp.“He needs you.”
“Gage needs me?”
