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Chapter One
VALEN
August 3rd
Chad Buckland and Valen Maxwell
would like to invite you to join them
in celebration of their union…
“Are you ready?” a sweet voice questioned from the doorway behind me.
My grip tightened around the bouquet of flowers in my hands, the stalks cracking and crunching under the pressure. “Nope,” I answered bluntly, finally pulling my eyes away from the wedding invitation tucked into the frame of the mirror in front of me.
My life was going to change today.
Dramatically.
And while I knew it would be for the better, it didn’t ease the waves of panic that had been growing steadily over the course of the morning.
It was a little after midday now, and somehow I’d managed to keep my head above water, though only barely.
“Valen?” The sweet voice again.
My wedding planner.
Because I was getting married—today.
Actually, right now.
“She’s ready,” Jade told the wedding planner, far more certainty in her voice than mine. A second later, she appeared in front of me with her brow pinched into a serious frown as she waved off the planner and her posse of helpers who had crowded in the doorway. “She just needs a moment.”
They hustled back down the hall in a flurry of concerned whispers, heading for the living room where the rest of my bridesmaids were waiting, tapping their feet as time ticked on.
“I think I need to call Maddie,” I told Jade, my hands shaking as I reached for my cell to call the one person who couldn’t be here, but whose voice would instantly calm me.
Maddie, Jade, and I had been best friends since we were freshmen in high school. We’d been inseparable, though people often wondered why, given our personalities were so starkly different.
In my mind though, that’s why our friendship worked.
We were the perfect mix.
The quiet friend.
The confident friend.
The cagey friend.
And given my eagerness to avoid my own wedding day and get the hell out of here, I’m sure it wasn’t hard to assume which one of these was me.
Maddie was the quiet, motherly type and exactly the person who I desperately wished I could speak to in this moment to talk me off the ledge, but Jade had other ideas. She swiftly intercepted my grasp, swatting my hand away and snatching the phone from atop the vintage desk in front of me. She backed away, holding it behind her and shaking her head.
“Jade…” I warned, though really, there was nothing I could do. She wasn’t the one wearing an over-the-top princess dress with a skirt so large it could house a small family. It would take me at least a full minute to get across the room to where she was standing.
“When this is done, we will call Maddie, and you can tell her all about the moment you freaked out before walking down the aisle. But right now, you have to trust that I love you and promise everything’s going to be okay,” Jade reassured me, tossing the phone onto the bed and holding her hands in the air, hoping I wouldn’t shoot.
For a second, I wanted to shoot.
